New study reveals motorcycle deaths were down dramatically in 2009

From:
http://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news.php?NewsID=21192#loaded

A report has been released in the US by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), which reveals that motorcycle fatalities declined in 2009 by at least 10%. Based on preliminary data, GHSA is projecting that motorcycle fatalities declined from 5,290 in 2008 to 4,762 or less in 2009. The projection is based on data from 50 states and the District of Columbia. The declines come on the heels of 11 straight years of dramatic increases in motorcyclist deaths.

The new report – the first state-by-state look at motorcycle fatalities in 2009 – was completed by Dr James Hedlund of Highway Safety North. Dr Hedlund surveyed GHSA members, who reported fatality numbers for every state. While data are still preliminary, most states have quite complete fatality counts for at least nine months, making GHSA confident to forecast that deaths are down at least 10% for the full year.

GHSA is projecting declines in approximately three-fourths of states. The declines are notable in many states and in every region of the country. In California, for example, based on data for the first nine months, motorcycle deaths are predicted to be down 29%, while Florida and New York are down 27 and 16%, respectively.

As part of the report, GHSA members were asked to suggest reasons for the decline. States offered several reasons, including: less motorcycle travel due to the economy; fewer beginning motorcyclists; increased state attention to motorcycle safety programs; and poor cycling weather in some areas.

GHSA chairman, Vernon Betkey, said: “Clearly the economy played a large role in motorcycle deaths declining in 2009. Less disposable income translates into fewer leisure riders, and we suspect that the trend of inexperienced baby boomers buying bikes may have subsided.”

Betkey noted that, as with decreases in the overall highway fatality rate, progress with motorcyclist deaths can be attributed to more than just the economy. Betkey continued: “Multiple states indicated that because of the increases in motorcyclist deaths from 1997 to 2008, addressing this area has been a priority for state highway safety programs.”

As more than half of motorcycle fatal crashes do not involve another vehicle, states have been increasingly funding targeted enforcement to ensure that motorcyclists are in compliance with laws regarding endorsements, required insurance and helmet usage. State and federal governments also have stepped up efforts to address drunk motorcyclists.


Amazingly honest that they don't attribute the reduction to one main 'cause'. perhaps they don't have speed camera partnerships over there? :)

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Big Elephants . . .

. . . Are Useful

Who says?

I say!

After reading the book of the same name. To give it the full title:

Big elephants are useful, a compendium of mnemonics and idioms. By SJ Hartland


And, of course, that's a mnemonic for spelling 'beauty' etc.

It also has a 'motoring safety' section. You may have heard the acronym 'COAST' for:

Concentration
Observation
Attitude
Space
Time

The book includes 'CAT', for:
Concentrate
Anticipate
Tolerate

And an expansion of the 4xS principle, which I use as:
Safety
Smooth
System
Speed (although many people prefer 'system' as the second one)

The book suggests 5xS
Safety
Smooth
System
Style
Speed

- a variation on the oft-mentioned but rarely understood 'gloss' or 'finesse'.

Last one: 'Up up and away'

Any ideas? It's for parking your car on a hill! If the car's facing uphill, turn the front wheels away from the kerb, the idea being that if the handbrake fails then the car won't roll back down the hill.


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Keith Code Article

Keith Code and the California Superbike School regular mail out articles.

His most recent is 'Electronics Or How a Chip Can Save Your Bacon'

In it he details the development of the various training bikes and rigs he's developed over the years, including teh famous 'No BS Bike'.

But this article is about what he considers the most important bike so far . . .



As a purist, my viewpoint on competing with sophisticated electronics on road racing motorcycles is: get rid of them. On the other hand, they’ve cut down on highside crashes and injuries, a real blessing in that sense. However, my area is rider training so let’s talk about how computer chips and an obscene amount of horsepower can help you become a better rider.

Several months ago it was announced that the California Superbike School was going to put students on the new BMW S1000RR. Hold on - you’ve got to be joking - that’s the most powerful liter bike ever produced for public consumption. It is the only one that puts over 180 bhp to the ground and will propel it through space at 200 mph. I wouldn’t call the reaction to that announcement actual hate mail but let’s just say there were some strong opinions concerning Keith Code’s sanity.

My current unequivocal statement: For track-based, high performance rider improvement, this ultra fast bike (which also handles with the best of the class) tempered and tamed by its state of the art electronics is the most fantastic training aid ever developed—period!

. . . in 1984 when I built the first training aid, the Panic Braking Trainer. oach riders on recovering from a locked up front wheel. Two years later in 1986 I built the first On-Board Camera Bike which gives the closest-to-real view of how you are riding.

. . . 1997, I conceived and had built the Lean & Slide Bike trainer. It provides rapid correction of body position problems and trains riders on how to save rear-end slides due to misapplication of throttle.

In 1999 . . . I began work on the electronic Control Trainer. It’s a stationary bike, connected to a computer, that walks the rider through all of the combinations of braking, downshifting and upshifting, both with and without the clutch. I’m still working the bugs out of that one.

. . . No BS Bike which has two sets of handlebars . . . gave riders a definite feel for how their unconscious bar inputs affect the bike and how positive and accurate the steering is when only using the bars to change directions.

And finally, . . . designed another stationary training bike we affectionately call the Fukka. The bike flicks side to side on air rams to simulate steering and lean and a variety of body positioning techniques we’ve developed . . .

Add to those 6, the S1000RR and you’ve got all 7 proven training aids that exist and the last is, by far, the best.

So far this year, over 400 or our students have run 49,000 track miles at 4 tracks in 13 days of riding. The training was conducted in all sorts of weather, including rain, on our 2010 BMW S1000RRs fitted with Dynamic Traction Control and Race ABS systems. Yes, we run the first session in Rain Mode which limits the power output to “only” 150 bhp. After the first ride students are allow to go for the full power.

The bike provides an electronic cushion that forgives the rider some of the more common errors. This curtails panic; riders have that cushion and it provides time to gather themselves together before it escalates to out-of-control proportions. At the same time, NO, the bike cannot and will not forgive truly stupid riding.

Here are the results. Compared to the 600s we’ve used for the past 30 years; 12 million miles of track training; over 125,000 students; at 106 tracks around the world…our crash ratio has reduced by 400%. In real world numbers it looks like this: Last year we had 1.2 crashes per per school day average. This year so far, it’s down to a very convincing 0.3 per day.

Let me point out once again, bone stock, these bikes put out 193 bhp, add an Akrapovic pipe and that number is 204.5 bhp. Horsepower is not the cause of crashing and the S1000RR is the best high performance rider training aid ever invented. I rest my case.

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Road Safety Advertising

Much road safety advertising is of the 'crash and burn' variety, working on scaring the viewer.

There are notable exceptions, such as the DfT's 'Perfect Day' (if you haven't seen it, there'll be a link from the 'labels' listed on this page), and it's recent motorcycle (or 'motorcyclist') awareness ad. currently screening on TV.

Here's another which takes a different viewpoint, from the Sussex Safer Roads group..





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Vision Zero?

Are you aware of Vision Zero?

It's an ambitious - many would say unrealistic, impossible even - ideal, of reducing road deaths to zero. It gained momentum in Sweden, and has been picked up over the last few years across the world.

One 'problem', through, is that motorcycles sit very uneasily into the ideal, as it heavily features 'safer roads' and 'safer vehicles', while motorcyclist deaths usually feature 'unsafe riders' . . .

However, here's a list from iRAP, of ways motorcycling could be made safer.

http://toolkit.irap.org/default.asp?page=roaduser&id=6

In many countries, motorcycles are a popular form of transport. Motorcycles are relatively cheap compared to other forms of motorised vehicles, and provide mobility to millions of people worldwide.
However, unlike other forms of motorised transport, there is very little protection for motorcycle riders and passengers. When crashes do occur, they often have very severe consequences, especially at higher speeds or in situations where larger vehicles are involved. The chance of a motorcycle rider or passenger surviving a collision with a car is greatly reduced at speeds over 30 km/h.

Even in countries where motorcycles form only a small part of traffic, motorcycle casualties can form a significant part of the crash problem, and the risk of injury or death is many times greater for motorcyclists than for other forms of transport.

In many low and middle-income countries motorcycles are a major means of transport and their requirements should be reflected in road design and traffic management measures. In high-income countries motorcycling is often a more minor transport mode but also a significant leisure pursuit, and the two groups of motorcyclists present very different risks and require different countermeasures to improve their safety.


The page goes on to detail about 20 'treatments' and their potential for casualty reduction.


Now, if you haven't already Googled 'vision zero', as soon as you have search for 'risk compensation' too . . .


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Money buys advertising

Nothing new there, then.

But I recently saw a novel advertising idea which relies on having money without actually costing money.

It's for a local taxi firm, and involves smaller stickers on one pound coins. (It's also probably illegal, defacing the coin of realm or something . . . )

I guess they spread them around the town, as they take punters 'in' for a night out - but I can't remember where I picked it up as part of my change during a purchase!


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Delivery Mopeds

The use of mopeds for pizza delivery riders is well-established in the UK. The first company in Newbury was 'Heroes', and I ran a session for a couple of their riders in the days just before CBT came in.

But the French have riders delivering newspapers!

All hi-tech stuff, with electronic mapping software managing their routes etc.

Sud Ouest, one of France’s leading regional daily newspaper groups, has successfully increased the number of home deliveries of newspapers its agents can make, and at the same time made its deliveries much more efficient, by introducing StreetServicer, an advanced route optimisation system from MapMechanics, a UK company specialising in logistics solutions and geographic information systems.

Crucially, StreetServicer has enabled the group to re-optimise and restructure many of its existing delivery rounds without radically changing them – essential in an operation where the individual self-employed delivery agents, or “porteurs”, have extensive local knowledge and experience of their own areas, and where a total change in delivery patterns would have brought more problems than benefits.

“StreetServicer has proved to be exactly the solution we need,“ says Philippe Sender, logistics manager at Sud Ouest. “So far as we know, there is nothing else quite like it on the market.”

Home delivery of newspapers remains an important feature of daily life in France, and Sud Ouest delivers to around 120,000 customers in an area stretching from La Rochelle in the north down to the border with Spain.

Deliveries are carried out by self-employed teams, usually using mopeds in urban areas and cars in more rural areas. On average they make 180 deliveries a day each, and some make up to 300. All newspapers must arrive no later than 7.30 am.

Two factors prompted the company to look for a more efficient solution. It wanted to take over some deliveries that were previously made by post, ensuring earlier delivery and saving cost; and it was required to take responsibility for delivering certain national newspapers in its area. This second demand was driven by a nationwide political initiative to find a more environmentally friendly method of newspaper distribution.

For some years Sud Ouest has used TruckStops, the routing and scheduling system from MapMechanics, to plan newspaper deliveries to shops and kiosks. “We have been very pleased with TruckStops on our store deliveries,” says Philippe Sender, “so we tried applying it to the home deliveries as well.”

He adds: “However, we found that it was not the ideal solution for this very special requirement. It always attempts to produce the most efficient routes possible, but in this application, that would have involved too much change from our existing practice. We wanted a system that would allow us more flexibility in deciding how much to change and how much to keep the same.

“Although TruckStops can do this to some extent, we hoped we would find a system that would approach the scheduling task in terms of street segments rather than individual points.”

If possible, Sud Ouest wanted a product that would integrate effectively with GeoConcept, the powerful geographic information system, which it was already using with TruckStops and for various other types of location-related business analysis. GeoConcept had proved invaluable in identifying those customers who received their newspapers by post, but would be suitable for switching to direct deliveries.

It also hoped to find a product that would take advantage of NAVTEQ street-level map data, which is its mapping of choice. As it happens, MapMechanics distributes both GeoConcept and NAVTEQ data in the UK, and therefore has extensive knowledge of them.

Sud Ouest explained its requirements to MapMechanics, which suggested that its StreetServicer solution would be suitable. This is a specialised optimisation system for scheduling the movements of people who make multiple calls on the same roads or streets, whether driving or on foot. It is designed to integrate with GeoConcept, and is fully compatible with NAVTEQ data. For its latest version MapMechanics has taken special account of the requirements of Sud Ouest and other users with similar optimisation requirements.

“StreetServicer allows us to insist that a specific porteur will continue to serve a given area,” says Philippe Sender. StreetServicer does this by applying a concept called a “preferential penalty”, which allows the user-company to stipulate that specific existing routes must be retained, even if the objective result might seem less than optimal.

MapMechanics’ director Mary Short explains: “Whilst some scheduling optimisation systems allow users a degree latitude in terms of ring-fencing existing or preferred operations, StreetServicer takes the concept of ‘preferred routes’ to a new degree of sophistication. This is especially important where the people doing deliveries have existing relationships with customers or recipients.”

Not only does StreetServicer offer this flexibility; it also allows users to produce routes where the priority is either the time taken or the distance covered (or a mixture of the two). And it takes full account of the minimum and maximum work load that each person or vehicle can take on – the quantity of goods they can carry, vehicle capacity, distance travelled and time available.

Initially Sud Ouest deployed StreetServicer to handle around 30,000 deliveries in the Bordeaux area, which is covered by 130 porteurs. The company has been able to add a number of new routes to accommodate almost 2,000 new customers; yet only about 20 per cent of the existing routes have been altered – which has been sufficient to meet Sud Ouest’s objectives.

“The roll-out has been very successful,” says Christine Duquesne, business analyst at Sud Ouest specialising in logistics and geographic information systems. “Our routes are more efficient now, and StreetServicer has helped to show up mistakes that were not evident before. In one case, for instance, it revealed that a porteur was travelling 10km further than was necessary – a significant excess on an urban operation.”

She says StreetServicer helps the company to avoid the “domino effect” that can arise with more conventional scheduling systems. “If you alter one route, the changes could affect all the others. With StreetServicer, we can control this much better, and prevent it from becoming a problem.”

Christine Duquesne says the logistics platform managers have been happy with the new system. “They have told us it works well.” She says it has also reduced the amount of time it takes to plan the routes for the platform, and makes it easier for the company to negotiate with the porteurs to implement the new routes. The optimisation process will be repeated periodically as delivery patterns change, so the time-saving will apply on every occasion.

The StreetServicer system is now being extended to the rest of the Sud Ouest region – a process that should be completed within a couple of months.

“MapMechanics spent a lot of time ensuring that StreetServicer produced the right result for us,” says Philippe Sender. “Now we are sure it is exactly what we want.”

He adds that it will be possible in future to achieve even further benefits. “MapMechanics has proved itself eager to meet our requirements, and is therefore continuing to develop the software.”

He says other regional newspaper groups are looking for new systems for home deliveries, “and they will certainly be interested in StreetServicer.”

Map Mechanics



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Another . . .

And here's the afrementioned 'crash and burn' type ad.




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Perfect Day

Just in case you haven't seen it, and now the better weather will be encouraging more riders out on the roads:




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Think!

Seen the recent DfT 'Think!' motorcycle ad?

It's very different from previous 'crash and burn' types, and is more along the theme of the excellent 'Perfect Day'.

Watch here, with the ad itself on the end of the 'How . . . ' section.





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