Motorcycle rider age and risk of fatal injury - key findings

• Fatalities among riders aged 17 and over decreased by around 6 per cent between1991 and 2001 while over the same period fatalities among riders 40 years and over increased by 77 per cent.
• Fatalities among riders 40 years and over as a proportion of all rider fatalities, increased from 14 per cent in 1991 to 27 per cent in 2001.
• The popularity of motorcycling appears to be increasing significantly among the 40 years and over age group.
• Despite the significant increase in older rider fatalities, the risk of fatal injury to motorcycle riders per distance travelled is still significantly higher among younger riders.
• Motorcycle riders are around 29 times more likely to be fatally injured than operators of other vehicles travelling the same distance.

Evaluating and developing fleet safety in Australia

This project has reviewed developments in fleet and work-related road safety in Australia, particularly the following areas.

• The extent of the problem.
  
• Examples of best practice.
  
• Mechanisms for evaluation.
  
• Theoretical paradigms and future directions.
  

From this, the report achieves the following aims.

1. Identifies a range of societal, business, legal, and cost reasons to focus on fleet safety at the macro and microlevels.
2. Describes a wide range of government, insurer, and occupational health and safety (OHS)-led case studies.
3. Develops an approach to fleet safety evaluation based on a range of proactive and reactive, or lead and lag keyperformance indicators (KPIs) on crash rates, costs, and qualitative process issues.
4. Identifies an apparent lack of fleet safety theory, and then describes several more general safety theories andframeworks, including the Surveillance Model, the Haddon Matrix and Organisational Culture-based approaches.
5. Synthesises the above to develop a best practice process model for fleet safety and recommend future work.

Appropriateness of valuing leisure travel time savings

Appropriateness of valuing leisure travel time savings

The analysis of speed limit changes on rural freeways and divided roads included scenarios where leisure trip travel time was valued at zero, for comparison with the results where it was valued in the same way as trips in cars for other private purposes.

There is a view that on some trips, the travel time saving per trip travelled at a higher speed is so small that the benefit cannot be perceived by vehicle occupants and hence has zero value. In rural areas, trip distances are typically longer than in urban areas and travel time savings per trip are potentially substantial if travelling at a higher speed. A DOTARS analysis showed that 41 minutes per trip could be saved on a 700 km rural section of the Hume Highway if travelling at 130 km/h on the better one-third of road and 120 km/h on the remainder, compared with travelling at 110 km/h over its whole length. It is likely that vehicle occupants would perceive travel time savings of this magnitude over long rural trips and would place value on the time savings.

Another issue arising in the valuation of travel time savings on rural roads is the desirability of consistency in the valuation of leisure time in the travel time costs and in the road trauma costs. The ‘human capital’ crash cost estimates do not include any value for leisure time forgone by crash victims. For consistency reasons, it could be argued that when the human capital cost estimates are used, the leisure trip travel time savings should be valued at zero. This variation on the base scenario analyses for rural freeways and rural divided roads was presented for this reason (Table 2).

‘Willingness to pay’ valuations of road trauma

There has been considerable attention given in the USA to valuing road trauma costs as comprehensively as possible, especially including values for lost quality of life in the case of killed and incapacitated crash victims. A leading US transport safety economist, Ted Miller, has argued that comprehensive crash costs, otherwise known as ‘willingness to pay’ values, should be used in benefit-cost analysis. This is because ‘willingness to pay’ values reflect society’s consumer preferences when it comes to decisions about road safety initiatives.

Miller (1996) has also suggested that ‘it seems essential to use compatible values of life and travel time in transport investment analyses’. Since the travel time values normally used for transport decisions reflect consumer preferences, this implies that ‘willingness to pay’ values of road trauma should be used when travel time savings are valued.

Reflecting this argument, the analysis in this study includes variations on the base scenarios for rural freeways and rural divided roads in which ‘willingness to pay’ values are used (Table 2). Travel time for all purposes of trip (including leisure trips) is valued in these analyses. It is suggested that this is technically the correct combination of valuations of these two important impacts of the speed limit changes analysed in this study.

On the basis of these valuations, the optimum speed on the rural freeways is 120 km/h for cars and light commercial vehicles and 95 km/h for trucks. If these speeds were to become the speed limits for each type of vehicle, respectively, there would be a net saving of $1.36 million per annum per 100 km of rural freeway. There would be a travel time saving of 4.5 minutes per car, but an increase of 3.2 minutes per truck, and there would be an additional 0.6 fatal crashes per year per 100 km of freeway.

On rural divided roads, the optimum speed is 110 km/h for cars and light commercial vehicles and 90 km/h for trucks, if ‘willingness to pay’ valuations of road trauma are used. If the truck optimum was to become their speed limit (but no change in limit for cars), the total impact would be a saving of $864,000 per annum per 100 km of divided road. There would be no travel time saving for cars, but an increase of 6.7 minutes per truck, and there would be a reduction of 0.3 fatal crashes per year per 100 km of divided road.

If speed limits on each class of rural road (including rural undivided roads) were to be moved closer to the optimum speeds, there could be a substantial net gain in total economic costs across the road network (and perhaps even a net reduction in crash costs). This is because a large proportion of rural road travel (and an even larger proportion of rural crashes) is on undivided roads. A reduction in crash costs may result because, although speed limits for cars would increase on freeways, their limits would decrease or remain the same on other roads, and truck speed limits would decrease on all roads, especially the undivided roads with higher crash rates. However, reliable data on rural traffic levels using each of the four classes of road analysed in this study was not available to calculate the total economic impacts across the rural road network.

Key facts for new drivers

Learning a new skill

Think about this: learning to drive is like learning to play a sport – for example, tennis.

First, you develop an interest and find out the requirements to play the game (how old must you be to drive, who can teach you, what the basic rules are, etc.).

• You find a good coach (the driving instructor) and someone to practise with (your parent or older friend).
  
• You learn the basic skills (steering, braking, turning etc.) and practise at the local level.
  
• As you improve, you begin to realise there is more to it than you first thought. You need to learn how to position yourself to have time and space to react to opposition players; how to anticipate what other players may do; and how to cope with different playing surfaces and conditions. (You practise driving on different roads and at different times and in different conditions).
• After lots of lessons and practice you are ready for greater challenges (freeways, night time driving, wet weather).
  
• Eventually, after even more practice, you no longer need either your coach or your practice partner. (You gain your P licence).
  
• If your skills begin to slip, for example, your backhand or overhead lob (reversing, changing lanes), you take another couple of lessons.
  

Ask yourself this:

Can you become good at tennis without practising?

If you described the game of tennis would you say it's only about the way you use the racquet?

Would you take up tennis and then compete in a big tournament after only a couple of lessons?

How much practice is enough when learning to drive?

Driving is more difficult than it first looks.

There is more to it than just handling the vehicle's controls and manoeuvring the car in and around the roads. (These are called the physical skills of driving).

There are a lot of decisions to be made while driving like ‘Who has right of way here? Can I turn left from this lane?’ and using the road rules. (These are called the cognitive or thinking skills of driving).

At the same time, you must look out for and manage unexpected hazards – such as other road users and changing weather conditions. (These are called perceptual or detection skills)

It takes a long time to put all these skills together and be a good driver.

In fact, most road safety experts warn that you will need at least 120 hours of driving practice.

That sounds like a lot, but it is not that difficult to build up to this number of hours.

Most young people have their learner licence for at least a year, and practising 2–3 hours a week is achievable.

Every time you are in the car you should be behind the steering wheel! Even short trips to school, work or sport can quickly add up to become lots of experience.

It is important that over the learner period every possible type of driving experience is practised. The support – and extra set of eyes – that your supervisor can give during practice drives is invaluable.

Make sure that the first time you come up against a difficult driving situation isn't when you are in the car on your own after gaining your 'P' licence.