June 2012

Hi Guys I hope this rider safety update finds you all well and safe and your motorcycle is not trapped in the garage by the rain but if you are an all year rider please take extra care and watch out for the oil slicks on the road and remember you will be even more difficult for other road users to see due to the weather conditions and misting on the inside of windscreens, so it’s best to assume that you have not been seen and ride defensively.I have recently received a grant from RAC to conduct Rider Skills Enhancement Course. I was originally going to cover Bunbury and Albany but I was contacted after I received the grant from some riders in the Pilbara asking if there were any courses that I knew of in their area, so I will be going to Karratha and Port Hedland to deliver the course which is based on the Motorcycle Roadcraft book. This will be conducted with the help of the local Roadwise representative and the WA police. I am hoping that I can get additional funding in the future so that I can expand this course to other regional areas.As an update on the proposed W. A. Motorcycle and Scooter Transport Policy, I received confirmation from the Department of Transport that they are in the process of installing Motorcycle parking bays at 16 train stations on the Mandurah to Clarkson line which is a total of 174 bays. These are scheduled to be completed by the end of June and will be monitored for usage and expanded if necessary. This also means that if they are underutilized it will be very difficult for us to argue to expand this initiative over the entire rail network. The other items raised in our submission to the Department of Transport is the use by motorcycle and scooters of bus lane during peak times and the use of emergency lanes on freeways have been referred to the Office of Road Safety for an evaluation and I will be contacting them next week to arrange a meeting. I was also notified that the Minister for Transport Hon. Troy Buswell will be briefed on all developments on these and new issues.We now have an additional 15 actions coming out of the Motorcycle and Scooter Advisory Group Forum that we held late last year and these are being looked after by the relevant Government agencies and just to recap on the actions from our original forums, of the 50 actions identified and committed to acting on 39 have now been completed and the remaining 11 are in progress. The full list is on the Office of Road Safety website www.ors.wa.gov.auI had the opportunity this week to attend the B Street Smart Forum held at Challenge Stadium (some may have seen this covered on the news) we were also invited to set up a motorcycle and scooter safety display (an opportunity I jumped at) there were about 3000 high school students there from over 40 school and the reenactment of a real crash between a car and motorcycle I think gave a powerful message to these 15 – 17 year olds and it gave us a chance to talk to the future road users about motorcycle and scooter safety 9 several I spoke to already had their scooter license. I found it great to talk to some of these kids and all I got back was how it suddenly became real to them after hearing from real victims and survivors and their families.Dave WrightRIDE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.