April 2016

Safety ReportApril 2016IN THIS REPORT –

• European standards (ECE22.05) motorcycle helmets now legal in WA
• Next actions – lane filtering, motorcycles in priority bus lanes, motorcycle route road safety audits.
• Results of the WA Strategic Direction for Improving the Safety of Motorcyclists and Moped riders
• Motorcycle safety videos on our website

 Motorcycle HelmetsAs most of you would of heard by now the Minister for Road Safety Hon. Lisa Harvey announced on April 1^st that W.A will now allow motorcycle riders to wear helmets that meet the European standard ECE 22.05 As action No 4 of the WA Government Strategic Direction for Improving the safety of Motorcyclists and Moped Riders (SDSMM) this is a welcome announcement as we have been working towards this for over 5 years, why so long as hear you ask. Well in order to get this over the line Australia wide it took us working with the Australian Motorcycle Council (we are member of their Helmet Committee) to convince the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission that we need to change the regulation that restricted the sale of international standard helmets in Australia. This was done last year. We then needed to work on each State Government to change the definition of what is a legal helmet to wear in that state, so we have been pushing hard over here to get this completed. A big thank you must go out to all the state representatives in all the States for their hard work over a long time on this important issue. We can now look forward to our motorcycle shops stocking these helmets, and we should also have a bigger range of helmets to choose from as they cab be imported directly from the suppliers without the need for an expensive retesting and manufacturing to Australian standards.The European helmet standard is based on research of over 10,000 real motorcycle crashes looking at the damage to the helmets and injury’s to the rider including neck and thorax damage, based on the findings of this extensive research the weight of European helmets can be 300grams lighter that the Australian counterpart and reduce the risk of neck and thorax damage while still giving good impact and abrasion protection. I will be going out and buying a ECE 22.05 helmet as soon as they appear in the shops. Next ActionsBus LanesNow That we have that helmets sorted we are now pushing for the next issue that we have also been working on for many years (thing move slow in Government sometimes) The next action that we should be seeing approved soon is the acceptance of Motorcycles to use priority bus lanes. The trial that has been running on Beaufort Street and South Street ended last month without any issues in relation to rider safety or bus use. We will in the near future once the Department of Transport have completed their evaluation, be asking that all possible priority bus lanes be made available to motorcycle riders.Lane filteringLegalised lane filtering for motorcycles this is action No 14 of the SDSMM and we have been pursuing changing this legislation for many years, we support the adoption of the Victorian model of this which legalises lane filtering between slow moving traffic at a speed of 30km hr. this is already a common practice by motorcycle riders and it just makes sense to legalise the practice given that it presents no safety implications if done sensibly and with a regard for other road user behaviour.   Motorcycle Road Safety Audits of Popular Motorcycle Routes Action 34 of the SDSMM is to carry out motorcycle specific road safety audits. We have been calling for this also for many years and is good to see that the Government has seen the benefit of adding this to the actions. I have been invited to Victoria twice in recent months to carry out just these motorcycle road safety audits and have sent the reports to the Road safety Commission to highlight the benefit of these audits to motorcycle riders. I have also held a meeting with them to investigate securing funding to carry out the audits in the near future. The Road Safety Commission will be applying for funding for this action. We as riders all know that the roads and roadside have a huge impact on causing and affecting the severity of motorcycle crashes and it is encouraging that this is now being progressed.Many of these actions where raise by riders at our Motorcycle Safety Forum as part of Motorcycle Safety Week Last November and I believe that our input as riders has had some influence on the Governments actions.The full list of the actions from the W.A. Strategic Direction for Improving the Safety of Motorcyclists and Moped Riders Can be found at https://rsc.wa.gov.au/Statistics-Research/Motorcycle-Safety-ReviewSafety Videos on our websiteOur website guru Peter Butler has been working his magic on our website again. He has now added lots of videos from the Rider Risk series that we got from New South Wales along with the Road Safety Commission videos and the Safer Roads for Motorcycles videos. He has also added our booklets – Braking Habits and our newest publication Make Yourself Visible, which has now gone national through all the various State organisations in Australia. You can now download these publications free of charge directly from our website www.mrawa.org and view the videos by clicking on the YouTube link on our website. Thanks peter and all your team for Smarter Websites for all your help in building a great website. That’s it from me for now, as always please feel free to contact me on any issues you may have RIDE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT