Road safety – The safety of motorized two-wheelers without taboos or preconceived ideas! –

Posted on by admin

The safety of motorized two-wheelers without taboos or preconceived ideas !

Road safety - The safety of motorized two-wheelers without taboos or preconceived ideas! -

Research in motorized two-wheeler road safety seems to have reached an important milestone during the conference organized by INRETS, in both scientific and political terms. The end of the endless cliches speed = danger ? Debriefing…

Towards a "Grenelle de la moto" ?

The expression is in fashion, but the desire for consultation and openness on the part of Michèle Merli seems very real. After having abandoned the EV procedure for motorized two-wheelers in accordance with the wishes of the (re?) Unified motorcycle world (read), the new interministerial delegate for road safety (read on the appointment and CV of Ms. Merli) and on her willingness to experiment with traffic between lines) has indeed concluded these two days of INRETS conferences on the safety of motorized two-wheelers by its commitment to open "discussions without taboos"(See our video interview with Michèle Merli opposite). A desire for consultation, of course, very favorably received by the French Federation of Angry Bikers (FFMC), which will nevertheless follow the case very closely so as not to Let it be known! (see our video interview with Eric Thiollier opposite).

In particular, it will be necessary to carefully monitor the exact meaning of Ms Merli’s double-edged sword that "bikers are motorists like any other": no problem if it is a question of integrating them fully into the traffic while respecting their specificities and taking into account their intrinsic fragility, but it would not be a question of sticking motorcycles and scooters in traffic jams without power get out of it !

The conference of the National Institute for Research on Transport and Safety (INRETS) which took place in Marseille on March 5 and 6 (read) provided a fairly comprehensive overview of the state of motorized two-wheeler road safety research.

The first assessment is precisely to note the paucity of information in this area. Thus, most of the available data is limited to distinguishing "cyclos" (less than 50 cm3) from "motorcycles" (more than 50 cm3), and few are the researchers who can differentiate the 125 from the large engines, not to mention the scooters or motorcycles (read).

"Research must be better organized, more precise and less caricatured", considered Pierre van Elslande, researcher in the Accident Mechanisms department at INRETS (see also our video interview opposite), calling in particular for a"greater consistency of infrastructure: in the city, lanes that look like highways limited to 50 km / h should not be built"…

In other countries such as Norway, the data available are much more precise and allow for example theInstitute of Transport Economics to show that the number of accidents declared to insurance between 1998 and 2005 is lower for large engines (4.86 accidents declared per million "vehicle kilometer") than for small engines (6.81) and cyclos (7.99).

In the event of an accident, the risk of being more seriously affected in two-wheelers than in a car remains naturally higher, but according to studies by Horswill in 2003 and Langley in 2000 cited by Aurelie Moskal, researcher at INRETS , users of motorized two-wheelers have also "8 times more likely to be involved in an accident than motorists".

In terms of mobility of motorized two-wheelers, a survey by the Center for Studies on Networks, Transport, Town Planning and Public Construction (CERTU) has just started under the responsibility of Regis and Helène de Solère. Objective of the two researchers, who should publish their full results in early 2010: "have a precise picture of the movement of a population (who moves, how, when, why, etc.)", in order to"understand behavior, develop and evaluate transport policies".

The questionnaires used for this survey (which will be conducted in "classic cities"which are Lille, Lyon, Toulon, Grenoble, Rennes and Rouen) only allow for the moment to distinguish more and less than 50 cm3. But the two researchers took note of the need to further refine the typology of the two – motorized wheels.

In the meantime, the first results show that of the entire population, only 1% of French people get around in motorized two-wheelers (57% by car, 28% on foot, 11% by public transport, 2% by bicycle and 1% in "other modes"). As for users of motorized two-wheelers, they make 21% of their trips by car, 11% on foot, 3% by public transport and 2% by bicycle..

Still according to the initial results of this survey, users of motorized two-wheelers are also the most mobile with 5.28 trips per person per day in excess of 50 cm3 (5.04 for those under 50 cm3 and 3.94 for the whole population).

Article in development : stay connected !

Eric MICHEL

Related articles

Leave a Reply

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