Road safety – Gilles de Robien wants to meet the bikers –

Posted on by admin

Gilles de Robien wants to meet bikers

Road safety - Gilles de Robien wants to meet the bikers -

Chaired by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the 4th IRB reports a 2003 assessment that has clearly improved, including for motorcycles. Gilles de Robien calls for dialogue with motorcyclists, so that mutual trials of intent end.

According to the provisional figures communicated this morning by the government, which will have to be validated in May 2004, French roads have experienced 86,992 accidents in 2003 (-17.5% compared to 2002) causing 5,732 deaths (-20.9 %) and 111,135 injured (-19.4%).

Regarding two-wheelers, the drop in the number of motorcycle fatalities is very close to the average (-19.3%) while the number of scooter fatalities is up 8.5%.

"The decrease in the number of accidents has been continuous for 30 years, specifies Gilles de Robien, but she was not regular and had never been as strong as in 2003". In fact, while traffic has tripled in 30 years, the number of accidents has been divided by three over the same period."Progress in speed was further accentuated in November 2003, when the first automatic speed cameras were introduced.", welcomes the government.

In total, these new automatic piggy banks have in fact recorded 182,845 offenses as of December 31, 2003, including 19.35% of foreign vehicles, 7% of rented vehicles, 6% of company vehicles and less than 1% of motorcycles (which nevertheless represent 4% of the total fleet).

90% of the offenses observed by automatic radars concern a speeding violation of less than 20 km / h (only liable to the withdrawal of a point), while the excesses of more than 50 km / h represent only 0.3% of the whole, again indicates the government. Finally, as surprising as it may seem, only 1,101 valid disputes (with deposit of a deposit equal to the amount of the fine) were recorded and only 350 people asked to see the photo of their offense. !

Black boxes
The government also wants to set an example in terms of speed by gradually equipping its vehicles with an automatic limitation system. "My own vehicle will be equipped with a black box that I will keep at your disposal, which is a strong commitment !", thus promised the Minister of Transport to the journalists meeting in Matignon. Asked by Moto-Net on the point of knowing if he would also be ready to equip his personal 125 (read), Gilles de Robien replied that he did not ‘would see no problem but that "it would be an unnecessary expense, because I only drive in the fields and hardly ever on the road".

National open day on circuit
"We need to meet the bikers", continued the minister,"to approach the problems frankly and no longer make any trial of intentions". Of"concrete actions aimed at motorcyclists"are thus provided by the Minister of Sports Jean-François Lamour, as this"national open day"which will be organized in 2004 within speed circuits and auto-motorcycle learning circuits, in collaboration with the operators and sports federations concerned (French Federation of Motorsport and French Federation of Motorcycling)."The other biker associations, in particular the French Federation of Angry Bikers, will be associated with this event.", promises the government.

Chat around a table
Like Gilles de Robien, the interministerial delegate for road safety Remy Heitz also holds out a pole to the bikers, considering that he "you have to sit around a table and discuss, because you always blame us for the infrastructure, but the essential prerequisite is respect for the rules and speed". Certainly, but what to do when the speed limits are unsuitable for a type of vehicle? Let us recall that already in 1849, the American writer Henry Thoreau noted that"when laws conflict with our conscience, it is this that we must listen to"(Henry David Thoreau, Civil disobedience, Thousand and One Nights editions, 2.5 euros)…

Eric MICHEL

Related articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *