Originally Posted by
Old Steve
Saturday I did the Pro Rider silver course in East Auckland. Well worth the time and money (I paid $50, ACC pays the rest). In the absence of data to date, ACC will be tracking riders completing bronze, silver and gold courses and by year's end hope to have enough data to determine if riders who have completed these courses have a lower accident rate or not. There may be some problem with the size of the population field, there were only 5 riders on the course I did - great for the amount of one-on-one instruction but not conducive to building a large population of trained riders on which to draw conclusions.
But the instructor did show one statistic the ACC has generated that was interesting. We know that motorbike riders comprise approx 3% of the vehicles on the road yet we're 22 times more likely to be injured or killed. But riders wearing hi-viz jackets are 37% less likely to be in an accident, so hi-viz wearing riders are only 14 times more likely to have an accident. This justified to me my stance that if it reduced my likelihood of having an accident by 1/10th of a percent then I'd wear a pink ballet skirt when riding. Luckily for me and those who see me out riding, ACC has no data to support the rate at which wearing a pink tutu reduces accidents, so I'll just continue wearing the fluoro hi-viz.
Highest recommendations for the Pro Rider course. Great instructor, lots of one-on-one instruction, lots of riding, some good low speed instruction, instructor used radio to pass on instructions and advice. Great rides through some roads in the Hunuas that I haven't ridden on before.
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