Road safety – Bikers have three times fewer accidents than motorists –

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Bikers have three times fewer accidents than motorists

Road safety - Bikers have three times fewer accidents than motorists -

According to a study published yesterday by AXA France, bikers have three times fewer accidents than motorists. And in an accident involving a car and a motorcycle, the rider is only responsible in 30% of cases. But the consequences are more serious.

It is obvious that everyone recognizes that motorcycles are more dangerous than cars. Exactly 6 times more in raw data, and even 21 times more when the statistics are reduced to the number of kilometers traveled. With 1 million motorcyclists and 30 million motorists, France had in fact 923 killed on motorcycles and 4,602 in cars in 2002, according to figures from the Directorate of Road Safety and Traffic (DSCR).

While they are only a tiny proportion of traffic (0.8%), bikers represent nearly 13% of victims. A sad observation which, taken like that, allows the government to justify a particularly repressive policy with regard to speed, including for bikers, these "bad students"road safety which must"first respect the existing rules before requesting their modification", according to the leitmotif of Remy Heitz, the interministerial delegate (read in particular and our)…

But there is another evidence which, if it is generally shared by all bikers, is much less – if at all – by other users and the public authorities: bikers are much more careful than others! Reduced to the proportion of the fleet, the risk of having a motorcycle accident is in fact 3.3%, against 9.5% on average for a motorist, according to figures provided by Club 14 (motorcycle subsidiary of AXA France , which insures 260,000 motorcyclists including 30,000 female motorcyclists). The study of motorcycle risk at Club 14 also shows that 7 times out of 10, in an accident involving a car and a motorcycle, it is the motorist who is responsible. "We recorded 9,000 motorcycle accidents in 2003", specifies Philip Modolo, the technical manager of the automotive branch of AXA:"and in an accident between a car and a motorcycle, the biker is only liable in 30% of cases".

Lack of turn signals, no glance in the retro, use of the laptop while driving, reading the newspaper in traffic jams or makeup, the list of these daily dangers is long. "Yes but I respected the limitations", will then have a good game to specify the motorist convinced by the monomaniac crusade undertaken for years by successive governments – whether left or right – against speed.

"Bikers are a vulnerable but responsible population", summarizes Éric Lemaire, president of AXA Prevention. Vulnerable" therefore "responsible, one would be tempted to specify … A simple observation of common sense which should incite any government a little" responsible ", precisely , to immediately set up real driving training, rather than installing a thousand expensive machines (80,000 euros each) to penalize the slightest exceeding of one kilometer per hour (read in particular) … Much less profitable in the short term, of course, but is it really the role of the State to reason as an accountant of SMEs in Poitou? ?

Eric MICHEL

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