Road safety – New sword in the water at the Ministry of Transport … –

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New sword in the water at the Ministry of Transport…

Road safety - New sword in the water at the Ministry of Transport ... -

The Minister of Transport and the interministerial delegate for road safety today received the FFM and the FFMC. A purely media meeting according to the FFMC, which did not allow to advance the debate on the lighting of fires during the day.

Another sword strike in the water? New unsuccessful meeting? New dialogue of the deaf (read)? Journalists who are interested in road safety issues definitely do not have an easy job when it comes to finding a title to relate yet another meeting between public authorities and representatives of bikers….

Or on the contrary very easy, since a simple copy / paste would be almost enough to cover all the "met","round tables","debates without a priori" and others "very frank discussions"which have followed one another in recent years…

Today’s meeting at the Ministry of Transport, where Minister Gilles de Robien and the interministerial delegate for road safety Remy Heitz received a delegation from the French Federation of Angry Bikers (FFMC) and the French Motorcycling Federation ( FFM), to discuss the already highly contested future experience of lighting fires during the day by all vehicles (read), therefore did not derogate from this brazen rule of mutual incomprehension…

After a good hour of discussion, the debate had not progressed a bit and Gilles de Robien hosted journalist Ruth Elkrief for lunch. It is therefore the interministerial delegate for road safety, Remy Heitz, who came to explain that "the experience would of course be maintained"how much she would be"beneficial for all users" and how "motorcyclists, who represent less than 1% of users but 15% of road fatalities", were to "make an effort"to improve statistics…

Is it really necessary to recall that if the "motorcyclists"die more than motorists in an accident, is that they are precisely without bodywork? And apart from a handful of excited people always put forward, the vast majority of them are extremely vigilant on the handlebars, precisely because they know they are very vulnerable in the event of an impact? And that except to put them in a car, we will not reduce the number of bikers killed if we do not reduce the number of accidents ?

For the FFMC, which had brought the minister no less than "27,630 signatures collected against this measure", It’s about a "new purely media meeting: the minister did not really listen to us, he stuck to his positions"."It’s not for lack of trying", deplores Éric Thiollier, former member of FEMA (read) and new general delegate of the FFMC.

"We made three concrete proposals to the minister that were brushed aside with a wave of the hand", explains Frederic Brodziack, spokesperson for the FFMC:"promote the technology of automatic lighting of lights according to visibility conditions, launch an awareness campaign among motorists so that they turn on their lights when necessary, as provided for in the highway code, and a campaign aimed at to improve the sight of all users, 45% of whom have a sight problem"…"We were not listened to", confirms Henri de Voguë of the National Office:"Remy Heitz wanted to launch this measure anyway and he made it clear that he would not go back".

The position of the French Motorcycling Federation vis-à-vis this new government bulldozer measure is necessarily more measured, being attached to the Ministry of Youth and Sports. It remains nonetheless hostile: "we are not frankly for this measure and we are even rather against", Jean-Pierre Mougin, president of the FFM, explains to Moto-Net:"in 1975, the visibility of bikers was important since they were forced to drive with the lights on to better differentiate them. So I don’t quite see why we should say the opposite today! This experience is not going in the right direction. Moreover, it is too short to be able to draw sufficient lessons. Not being compulsory, it may even increase the risks since not everyone will light their fires. So there will be no uniformity on the road".

"This measure will of course take effect on October 31, there is no question of going back", concluded Remy Heitz, while acknowledging that"the experiment carried out in the Landes does not allow a real conclusion to be drawn, because the rate of ignition of the fires was too low (20%)". The interministerial delegate ensures that he has"no a priori on the results of this measurement", but he still considers that she"should save several hundred lives. We will set up a monitoring system to allow its evaluation and if the experience is conclusive, it may become compulsory and be extended to urban areas."…

Even if according to all French insurers (Grouping of mutual insurance companies and French Federation of insurance companies), in 75% of accidents involving a motorcycle and a car, the motorcyclist is not responsible. And even if, in 50% of cases according to INRETS (National Institute for Transport and Safety Research) and in 75% of cases according to the European MAIDS study (In-depth study of motorcycle accidents), the motorist involved states that he had not seen the biker…

Eric MICHEL

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