Compulsory daylight headlight use in NZ

[keithbuckby]

but I am amazed how invisible I still am

[scumdog]

Was talking to a friend a while back, a former mechanic. He had recently ridden a bike without a helmet and was surprised at the amount of mechanical noise. He said it explained why he seemed to be forever adjusting his tappets back in the 60s.

Ya ain't lived until you've heard a hot iron-head Sportster and the constant barrage of mechanical noise eminating from it....
Often used to be unaware of the noise until getting to a rally and riding around the site with ear-plugs out and helmet off, use to think "Man, has that noise been like that for the last two hours and it still runs???".

But on topic - saw a guy on an early Triumph come over the hill near home, it was morning and the sun was slightly behind him, he was running without a headlight on and he was bloody near invisible against the broken background of hawthorn hedge, dark road-surface etc,
I can understand how cars could pull out on front of a bike in those circumstances - hell, I found it hard to spot him and I'm motorbike focussed.

[MSTRS:Me]

But on topic - saw a guy on an early Triumph come over the hill near home, it was morning and the sun was slightly behind him, he was running without a headlight on and he was bloody near invisible against the broken background of hawthorn hedge, dark road-surface etc,
I can understand how cars could pull out on front of a bike in those circumstances - hell, I found it hard to spot him and I'm motorbike focussed.

But would Joe Lucas's finest equipment have made any difference?
There will always be scenarios when lights on/off won't help. Be vigilant on or in a vehicle. It's not much to ask, is it?

[warewolf]

This is a bad idea, despite the fact that I mostly endeavour to ride with my headlight on. "Lights On" (hard-wired) was introduced in Australia in 1992 and rescinded in 1997. BRONZ are on the money, they have done or read the research.

I have here a copy of the study conducted for the Aussie State of Victoria. "Parliament of Victoria Social Development Committee First Report upon the Inquiry Into Motorcycle Safety in Victoria, Motorcycle Visibility. March 1992" ISBN 0 7306 2692 X. It's worth a read, maybe not all the tables of numbers in its 180 pages, but it covers a lot about conspicuity - the actual issue that "lights on" attempts to address.

Their recommendations were:

1. The Minister for Transport implement road safety measures to increase motorcycle conspicuity by:
a) Encouraging motorcycle riders to use yellow, white, red and fluorescent colours for their motorcycles and their clothes;
b) Recommending to the Federal Government that daytime running light specifications inlcude a minimum intesnity of 1600cd, a minimum size of 180mm diameter and a requirement for two lights; and
c) Encouraging measures which increase the frontal or overall size of motorcycles.

2. VicRoads and the Transport Accident Commission [ie NZTA and ACC], in consultation with the Victorian motorcycling community, plan on-going public education programmes which encourage motorcycle riders to use appropriate conspicuity measures.

3. VicRoads and the Transport Accident Commission, in consultation with the motorcycling community and motoring organisations such as the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria [ie NZAA], develop on-going public education programmes which encourage car drivers to be aware of motorcycles.

4. The Minister for Transport advise the Federal Government of the possible dangers inherent in specifying daytime running lights for motorcycles be hard-wired, and request they delay implementation of Australian Design Rule 19/01 until the report of the International Committee on Daytime Running Lights is available and its implications for Australia are examined.

5. The Minister for Transport advise the Federal Government that the light specifications included in the Australian Design Rule 19/01 are inappropriate for Australian conditions.

6. The Minister for Transport amend the Road Safety (Vehicles) Regulations 1988 to exclude Australian Design Rule 19/01 from roadworthiness requirements for motorcycles registered in Victoria. [Yes, this was the State refusing to implement the bad "lights on" rules recommended by the Federal Government.]

7. THE USE OF DAYTIME RUNNING LIGHTS FOR MOTORCYCLES REMAINS VOLUNTARY. [Capitalisation for emphasis mine.]

Some interpretation for you. In Australia, roading is mostly state-based. But the Federal Government sets guidelines for vehicle roadworthiness standards, called the Australian Design Rules (ADRs). The state governments usually implement these. This rule was so bad that for the first time, the state governments threatened to ignore the Fed's' guidelines, see point 6.

A few snippets from the report:

Daytime running lights (DRLs) were first introduced for all vehicles in Finland and Sweden where the natural light intensity during the day is particularly low. In Sweden the ambient light intensity on a clear day ranges for 2000 to 26 000 lux and it does not rise above 10 000 lux when it is raining or foggy. In contrast, the average ambient light intensity in Victoria at noon ranges from about 50 000 lux in June to 110 000 lux in November.

In other words, Scandinavian studies are somewhat irrelevant because the contrast between the motorcycle headlight and the background light is much more marked. Further:

1967: Low beam headlight use promoted for all vehicles in Sweden to compensate for expected peripheral detection problems associated with their change from left-hand to right-hand drive.

ie "lights on" was introduced for a very specific reason.

The proportion of motorcycle collisions able to be influenced by daytime running lights is 2.1%.

This was based on analysis of collision data via a decision tree. And given the voluntary compliance level is over 60%, the legislation can have no influence on over 99% of collisions!!

Compulsory legislation requiring daytime running lights specially for motorcycles is now confined to France and 23 States of America. In 1983, the Office of Road Safety prepared a draft discussion paper in which it acknowledged that there was no statistically significant difference between these American States and those without compulsory running light legislation.

Speaks for itself, really.

In a nutshell, they concluded that for daytime use, bright colours worked best, but if you have a light it needs to be large rather than bright. Modern high-output lights like LEDs and HIDs may be contrary to this.


There's still time to make a submission...

[Max Preload]

Compulsory daylight headlight use in NZ Biker Politics & Law. Putting the onus on us to be seen is like telling toddlers playing in. He was the NZ rally champion from '75 to '77 before moving to the States. to move from voluntary to compulsory use of headlights during daylight hours.

Is it just me or does that not make any sense?

[MSTRS:Me]

Is it just me or does that not make any sense?

Like the proposal for daytime lights, there may be some logic hiding behind it....

[Eddieb]

Put my 2cents in.

While I agree with the concept that motorcyclists should ride with their lights on, I am against making this compulsory in law due to the following points:

Many motorcycles, including my own 1982 BMW with which I commute to work and back every day do not produce enough power at the slow 'rush hour' commuting speeds to power the lights, recharge the battery and keep the motorcycle running all at once for a period of time.

Most motorcycles do not have the lights hard wired on. This rule has the potential to turn the rider into a criminal simply by inadvertantly bumping a switch.

This proposal moves the onus of responsibility to the motorcycle rider regarding being seen, and as such would be used by insurance companies and other drivers as a defence for car drivers not looking and causing an accident. This problem is bad enough already without giving car drivers a 'get out of jail free' card when they do it.

It also provides a reason for insurance companies to not pay after an accident. If the light switch is bumped during the event of the accident subsequent investigations would show the switch as being off even if it was on before the accident. There would be no defence to this for the rider.

[Headbanger]

Is it just me or does that not make any sense?

I'm thinking is a spam-bot......a crafty one.

[SpankMe]

I'm thinking is a spam-bot......a crafty one.

Yep, it's taking random text lines from previous posts. Spam bots are getting smarter.

[Ocean1]

Spam bots are getting smarter.

Won't be long before they're indistinguishable from the more usual inhabitants.

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

Won't be long before they're indistinguishable from the more usual inhabitants.

gee I thought it was more intelligible than a lot of the threads here

[Naki Rat]

Seeing the TV3 news clip on the possibility of compulsory motorcyle headlight use brought to mind one thought...

Wasn't nanny state-ism voted out last weekend?

[swbarnett]

Seeing the TV3 news clip on the possibility of compulsory motorcyle headlight use brought to mind one thought...

Wasn't nanny state-ism voted out last weekend?

I found it very hard, if not impossible, to tell the two major parties apart. This is just more evidence that it doesn't matter much who's running the show.

Bring on consensus politics!

[Ocean1]

Bring on consensus politics!

That's not the problem, you've got consensus politics, your problem is that you're a minority.

What you need is a bill of rights, dude.

[swbarnett]

That's not the problem, you've got consensus politics

What we have is one large ruling party and a few hangers on. This is not consensus.

What I'm talking about is that system that works very successfully in Switzerland. Every party that's in parliament has a say in how the country is run on almost a daily basis. As does the population at large through the referendum system. Effectively a country run by committee, not one ideological view point.

, your problem is that you're a minority.

What you need is a bill of rights, dude.

Agreed. But we wouldn't need a bill of rights in a society where we weren't all just looking out for ourselves.