Cheesecutter campaign

[Pixie]

Early in the piece I e-mailed the nzhra thinking they'd be fairly concerned for the safety of t-bucket and other open car drivers, but I guess not as I never heard anything from them....
Interesting though, working in a car tyre shop, I've had heaps of them sign the petition, most without even bringing it to their attention. The pic of the falcon does the trick...

Try the MX5 club,Porsche,MG etc.-sports cars are particularly vulnerable to WRB's

[Gixxer 4 ever]

Thanks for the red bling Bell. Hope you are out doing somthin to stop them. Did I meet you in Wellington or was it in Taupo on the protest ride?








It would be better to bring your comments here so it can stimulate discussion. That's what the post was about. But you don't know me so I guess you missed the point.

[El Dopa]

I have noticed that there are non NZ racers who have signed the petition and there is quite strong feeling in some biker circles in the UK regarding this issue. People here want to offer thier support but if it will definitely be detrimental to the cause please let me know.

I would have thought that it is important to raise awareness of this issue outside NZ as it affects the safety of visitors too. I have just spent over 2 weeks on the back of bikes going round the North island and believe me I was very aware of the cheesecutters and the potential damage they can cause. I was only aware of this because of knowing a Kiwi who was living in the UK when the last fatality occured.

Just had a thought. If anyone in the UK or elsewhere wants to help out, they could possibly write to NZ MP's:

"I visited your wonderful country, it was great, best holiday ever blah blah blah, but I ws very concerned to see lots of WRB's everywhere. They are banned in my home country because they are rilly, rilly dangerous and I hope you ban them soon otherwise I won't come back and therefore you won't get your mitts on my lovely foreign currency. Yours sincerely, tourist".

[WelshWizard]

Just came across this letter on the web

To The Editor Motor Cycle News

DEADLY WIRE ROPE BARRIERS FOR UK ROADS – MCN DECEMBER 12th

I can assure your readers that the IAM Motoring Trust is not campaigning for wire rope crash barriers on UK roads. In a study we commissioned at the beginning of the year, reported in MCN on the 18th April, we identified both wire rope and armco type barriers as being potentially lethal to riders, and particularly their supporting metal posts.

Following that initial scoping study, the IAM Trust is sponsoring a major international research study of the potential risks of crash barriers to riders, and how designs can be changed to make to make them "rider friendly". Experts from road authorities, motoring / rider clubs and rider interest groups are working together on the project steering group to find the answers. The report of the IAM Trust sponsored study will be published towards the end of next year.


The EuroRAP star rating system rates a road on how well it prevents head on collisions, side impacts at junctions and run-off accidents. Steve Farrell’s article highlights one possible way of doing this but The IAM Trust would not support any system that increased the risk for motorcyclists. In general upgrading our roads to 4 star would benefit motorcyclists as much as any other road user.



Neil

Neil Greig

Director

IAM Motoring Trust

after seeing a post about how the IAM was suposed to be supporting the installation of WRBs in Britain I thought it only fair to post their responce

http://www.iam.org.uk/pressroom/driv...ring+Trust.htm

[sunhuntin]

The WRBs effect the Oz riders as well, the more they get uptight about WRBs the better, any overspill from them will help the NZ campaign.
In fact the more countries that start protesting about the WRBs the better, aim for a world wide ban on them and NZ may start to take us seriously. and as for overseas people signing the petition , maybe we need one just for overseas people so we could send the oversea on to the Tourist Board, after all they won't like a bad image for NZ and possible lose of tourist trade because tourist don't want to drive on our roads because they have to put up with WRBs here when they have been made illegal in their country

that intl only petition is a damn good idea! im on several american boards, as im sure many other members here are. plus american boards often have members from other countries as well.

yes, OBA has only been going some 18 months, but from what i gather from the letters page, it seems popular there if not here, as they are printing updates and additional info relating to previous articles almost every issue.

[Nikolai_V]

Hi, i`m new here, (post No.2) and in teh great NZ tradition i`d like to have my 2c worth on this topic, seeing as its something i both know a bit about, (being a roading engineer) and have an interest in, being a motorcyclist.

First though a statement from the notes of the last Road Safety Engineering Workshop... "In general crash barriers, (armco, thrie-beam, new jersey concrete or brifen wire rope) should only be used where the consequences of hitting the hazard it protects / going off the cliff behind it are worse than the likely effects of hitting the barrier" paraphrased but fundamentally the same.

Like it or not, engineering is all about a utilitarian good, the best outcome for the greatest number of people. Barriers cost money, concrete barriers cost more than armco, which costs more than brifen. More barriers equal less head on collisions (which incidentally result in casualty accidents in motorcyclists at a rate four times higher than car drivers), which equals less casualties.

We dont want to kill any particular road user group, to most of us in the industry we`re here because we actually want to make things better... Nothing depresses me more than getting the months crash reports on my desk and seeing the same old crap each month, no matter what we do. As long as everyone is either micheal shumacher or valentino rossi, people will die in their hundreds in NZ. You cant put barriers in peoples heads to make them not speed inappropriatley, overtake dangerously, ignore the warning signs of fatigue, drive drunk/drugged etc. We just put a band-aid on the problem, and try to strike the best balance between competing priorities.
I don`t mean in anyway to diminish the sense of loss and suffering felt by the families and victims of road crashes, but a healthy sense of perspective is needed here. How many fatalities have been directly attributed to the WRSB/brifen barriers? One highly publicised case. How many lives have been saved because of them? well that doesnt get mentioned as often.

We have a limited road safety budget to allocate, placing concrete barriers everywhere is not an option, nor even the best option. Dissipating your kinetic energy as you impact into anything is going to be risky regardless of what you hit. Barrier systems are rated and designed to prevent gating (penetration) and be redirective, however what is effective for a 2.5t pickup will not be for motorcycles. 0.4% of all road travel in New Zealand is via motorcycle, with motorcyclists and pillions making up 6.5% of road deaths and hospitalisations. Motorcycle accidents are primarily urban phenomena (which concurs with what most of us know, that inattentive car drivers are at fault a good chunk of the time) not many vehicles pulling out in the boondocks.

All these statistics - get to the point. The point is this. Data from before the introduction of brifen in NZ showed that 3/4 of single vehicle motorcycle accidents resulted in fatalities or hospitalisation. before Brifen. In other words we are killing ourselves on the roads, through inattention, overestimating our skills and abilities, misjudging the carriageway and (the kicker) hitting fences.

Thats it, fences and ditches are what we`re flying into - fully 6 times more often than barriers. In NZ we were hitting more animals than guard rails. Even better, Australian stats showed that only 5% of casualty accidents involved striking a roadside object. as opposed to 4.6% from head on accidents. So lets see, of that 5% of crashes we were injured more often by (in order) fences, ditches, other, parked cars, cliffs/banks, animals than guard rails. puts it in perspective.

It is accepted within the industry that the posts on barrier systems result in the vast majority of injuries, armco barriers, unless bridge rail (i.e. down to the carriageway) also have posts which are particularly unpleasant to slide into.

The point has been raised that if we magically turned all the brifen barriers into concrete, motorcyclists would be safe, beer would be free, speed limits would raise etc.

Unfortunatly, brifen has a very small footprint, and is suitable for situations where barriers were needed (for safety reasons) but could`nt be installed using traditional barriers. We couldnt replace all the brifen with concrete (Note i`m not talking about the median brifen in large grass medians - thats there as a means of slowing cars and preventing head ons, while still being able to be taken down to allow emergency vehicle access)

Rant over. My 2c worth - i ride, and i`m happy to take the risk with them, at least i can control whether or not i run off the road into a barrier (or just off the road in general), as opposed to someone asleep at the wheel who runs head on into my lane.

Just a thought, how many of you would fly domestically, if you knew that two 737`s would crash each year killing all aboard?? - same as the road toll.

Waiting for the angry flames, Nick

[MSTRS:Me]

.... How many fatalities have been directly attributed to the WRSB/brifen barriers? One highly publicised case. How many lives have been saved because of them? well that doesnt get mentioned as often.

....

We understand there to have been two. But hey, they were only motorcyclists, right?
FFS, it's not rocket science...for a safety system to be be utilised, it must be safe. What does it matter why a motorcyclist hits one of these things - if s/he is killed by it, then the 'safety' aspect is a joke. A very poor one at that.

[Ixion]

Those are , perhaps, valid points in the abstract (though all, of them resolve down to "we use WRB cos it's cheap"). But I'm not worried about being cut in half in the abstract. Its's being cut in half in the personal I'm worried about.

The essence of your argument is that it is acceptable to knowingly kill motorcyclists, if a greater number of cagers will not be killed. And killing motorcyclists is cheaper than implementing systems that kill neither motorcyclists nor cagers.

I am a motorcyclist. I am opposed to things designed to kill me (and that is precisely what WRBs are designed to do, you couldn't design a better killing device if you tried). I don't give a stuff how many cagers they save. Motorcyclists' lives are not a negotiable currency.

As to the "but they save motorcyclists from head ons" argument: In over 40 years on the road I have only twice encountered a potential head-on.Both times it was not difficult to take the necessary evasive action. Cars do cross the centre line, but the likelihood of one doing so in a place where I am and cannot avoid it is microscopic. The cheescutters are ALWAYS there. They cannot be avoided.

As to the "we only put them where the risk of hitting whatever is behind them is worse": come up to Auckland and I will show you miles of the stuff on the Waikato expressway, protecting nothing but scrubby fields.

[MSTRS:Me]

a potential head-on.Both times it was not difficult to take the necessary evasive action. Cars do cross the centre line, but the likelihood of one doing so in a place where I am and cannot avoid it is microscopic. The cheescutters are ALWAYS there. They cannot be avoided.

And with the flex involved, you will still need to take evasive action, probably to the left...straight into the cunting stuff on the road edge!!!

[sunhuntin]

i disagree 100% with everything you said, nikoli

one death caused by a wire rope barrier is too many. one death is enough to tear a family and a community to shreds, especially when a concrete barrier would have not caused that death. danials death was not a result of what you list as the main causes [fatigue, drink and drug] from what i understand, frame failure is what started the incident. coming into contact with the wire ropes is what ended his life. had he hit concrete, he would likely have been very sore, but alive.

brifen has a small footprint yes... but so do i. doesnt change the fact that im wider than my feet, and therefore i take up more space than they do. wire rope barriers distort when hit, and becomes a lot wider than its footprint. studies show they need at minimum 6 meter allowance for that distortion.

yes... concrete is expensive to install. say, you pay $100 for a 200meter stretch of concrete that will last 10 years, taking multiple hits from all manner of vehicles. you pay, what? $25 for the same length of barrier that will last maybe 10 months, and cost the same for every single collision due to posts needing to be replaced and wires re tensioned. whats more costly over a 10 year period?

you say concrete is not good for dissipating kinetic energy... how then do professional motorbike racers manage to walk away after striking one at upwards of 200k? id hate to the carnage of a pro racer hitting a barrier at the same speed, on the same track.

while i was riding down south, i rode upon a cheese cutter being erected on the edge of lake whataroa.
in the chance of an accident, the options were: aim like heck for the cliff on the opposing lanes that was also a blind corner, and hope like a hell a truck didnt come along, or aim for the lake and pray to god you some how avoided the ropes and posts and went for a swim.
personally, i would much rather lose my bike to the water and walk away drenched, than lose my limbs or life to a barrier.
there is no reason for that wire barrier to be where it is. the lake was shallow on the edge, and only if a car ended quite a ways out would it be in any major trouble. [i spent a good 20 minutes investigating the area]

as far as your listing fences, ditches and wandering animals as more dangerous... bollocks. ditches are generally forgiving and most would walk away virtually unscathed. fences are usually a little ways away from the road, and the grass verge serves to scrub off speed as well. wandering animals? well, they tend to move out of the way, or can be avoided.

as for using the percentage of motorcyclists vs cars, that doesnt prove jack. we pay more for acc in our registration than car drivers, because we are more at risk. that doesnt mean we can be brushed off as being less worthy of listening to and protecting from things that can be changed.
we are NOT second class citizens. id say 99% of the members here work and pay taxes every day, many have children and more are a part of a family, with parents and siblings. why are we not worthy of protecting from killer barriers.

they say the higher the speed, the bigger the mess. well, no matter what speed you hit a cheesecutter at, theres going to be a hell of a mess to clean up. 70k will pretty well ensure you walk away with an amputated limb. anything above that basically guarantees a fatality.

[Nikolai_V]

[QUOTE=Ixion;1395160]Those are , perhaps, valid points in the abstract (though all, of them resolve down to "we use WRB cos it's cheap"). But I'm not worried about being cut in half in the abstract. Its's being cut in half in the personal I'm worried about.

The essence of your argument is that it is acceptable to knowingly kill motorcyclists, if a greater number of cagers will not be killed. And killing motorcyclists is cheaper than implementing systems that kill neither motorcyclists nor cagers.

I am a motorcyclist. I am opposed to things designed to kill me (and that is precisely what WRBs are designed to do, you couldn't design a better killing device if you tried). I don't give a stuff how many cagers they save. Motorcyclists' lives are not a negotiable currency.

QUOTE]

But car drivers are? the value of a life is identical when it comes to justifying safety treatments. I am also a motorcyclist. I also dislike things that hurt me. I am also a car / truck driver at times. At the end of the day society (that is everyone, not just motorcyclists or car drivers but the whole shooting match) benefits by the barriers.

I`ll make a provocative statement. The big problem with barriers is that it gives motorcyclists something to blame for our appalling safety record... rather than ourselves. Yes any deaths are bad , we`re adults, we go out the door knowing we could not walk back in. Even better we`re motorcyclists - so more likely to die in the first place. better to blame the barriers that we hit after something goes wrong (which is never our fault) than our piss poor riding or changing road conditions.

Remember you need to have lost control or be sliding down the road for these things to be a problem. I cant really comment on the north island experience with them as down here is different (and it varies from region to region).

Bottom line. The barriers actually save lives - I dont hold any particular groups life in higher regard than anyone elses (excepth my own).

New installations of WRB will be checked to see that they are the most appropriate treatment, but remember for the greater good? if the choice is no barrier, endangering the 99.6% of road users who arent motorcyclists or installing one, most engineers would run that risk. I would. Even better i`d ride the damn road, and you know what, i`d accept it, as part of the risk of riding a motorcycle. A bit of personal responsibilty goes a long way.

[Ixion]

That *might* be valid *if* "most appropriate" did not really mean "cheapest". By your own statements.

(I realise they're not actually cheaper in the long run - but they are initially, which is all Transit look at).

I guess that you're going to have a hard time getting traction on a motorcycle forum for a message that says "we can save cagers lives by killing a few motorcyclists, AND save money. Sucks to be a motorcyclist"

At the end of the day society (that is everyone, not just motorcyclists or car drivers but the whole shooting match) benefits by the barriers.

Obviously, that is ONLY true if you are arguing that motorcyclists are not a part of society. There is no way on earth that any sane person can claim that WRBs benefit motorcyclists.

Even you are reduced to arguing that , yes, it is a lethal hazard , but so what, just ride to avoid it. Hard to see the benefit there.

[sunhuntin]

as mstrs said in another post... whatevers good for motorbikes, is even better for car drivers.

personal responsibility goes far, yes, but there are things that personal responsibility cannot prevent. such as: the diesel or loose unmarked gravel on a corner or being rear ended by a car driver who hasnt watched their following distance.
what do you suggest we do there? blame ourselves for the truckie that spilled diesel and gravel, and blame our selves for inattentive cager?

if the value of life is identical, then why is it ok to install barriers that say clearly bikers arent worth shit? that my life is worth less than that inattentive cage drivers?

[swbarnett]

Welcome aboard. It's good to see someone from the industry join the fray.

There are, however a couple of points you make I believe to be factually incorrect:

Unfortunatly, brifen has a very small footprint, and is suitable for situations where barriers were needed (for safety reasons) but could`nt be installed using traditional barriers.

I'm no engineer but I take issue with the assertion that concrete takes more space than WRBs. According to the manufacturers instructions a buffer of 3m on either side is required to account for the distortion of the WRB when hit. As far as I am aware there is no such requirement for concrete. Concrete takes LESS room than WRBs.

Just a thought, how many of you would fly domestically, if you knew that two 737`s would crash each year killing all aboard?? - same as the road toll.

Sorry, but this is not the same as the road toll. It may be the same number of deaths but an absolute death figure is meaningless when taken out of the context of population size. If the US had our road toll they'd be away laughing. Considering the number of kms done every year in NZ I don't believe that our road toll is anything to be worried about anyway. Especially when you consider the social cost of reducing it.

[MSTRS:Me]

A bit of personal responsibilty goes a long way.

And so does social responsibility. A barrier (or any safety system) that saves lives is generally to be commended. But one that has the potential to take lives should be rejected immediately.
Nikolai_V = Russian Roulette?? Play it with your own life, by all means, but not with the lives of those who have no choice.