January 2010

Our next Steering Committee meeting of The Motorcycle and Scooter Safety Action Group (MSSAG) is scheduled for February. For those that are not aware we are working towards a follow up forum to ensure that the actions from the organizations are moving forward and on schedule. The follow up forum will be held in August and all attendees from the last three forums will be invited. If there are any issues that any of our members or associates wishes for me to raise at this meeting please contact me so we can discuss it.As a part of the Department of Transport commitment to MSSAG they are working towards a Motorcycle Graduated Rider Training and Licensing Scheme they have now appointed a Project manager to work towards formulating a workable scheme and implementing it, I have had a meeting with him and he seems very open to any ideas that motorcyclist have (so if you have a any thoughts on this subject please let me know) We have been invited to be a part of the reference group team to help build this into a system that will produce better riders on our roads. Our appointment on this group is for the life of the project and we will be working to improve the safety of motorcyclist as always.Also as part of their commitment to MSSAG the Main Roads Department is holding their first ever information session for road designers and engineers purely on motorcycle safe road design. This will be open to designer for Main Roads, Local Government and private road Design Company’s, this really is a great opportunity to get the message over to designers of the different road designs required by motorcyclist. I will be addressing the group from the perspective of a motorcyclist and the problems we face daily will road designs. Other speakers are David Moyes (MRD) engineer and Jon Gibson Office of Road Safety, Director of Policy and Strategy. I hope this will be the first of many discussions we have with Road Designers.Dave Wright