Projects overview
Council’s projects focus in on three safety areas:
Safer roads and roadsides—collaborating with road owners to ensure that motorcyclist safety is understood, considered, and routinely factored in to road design, maintenance programmes, upgrades, signage etc.
Safer vehicles—research, trialling and promotion of safety technology for motorcycles.
Safer road users—educating all road users about motorcycle safety issues, and advocating on behalf of motorcyclists.
SAFER ROADS AND ROADSIDES
Road barrier protection
We are working with NZTA (who are responsible for the barriers on State Highways) to look at research options for protective coverings on existing barriers, and to develop standards for better barrier design and safety standards in future.
We are also consulting with Professor Raphael Grzebieta from the NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre, who is dealing with this same issue in Australia. Read the latest Council update for more details.
Urban pilot project
We are working with NZTA and Auckland City Council to develop a pilot project in an urban setting using what we learned from the work completed on the Whangamata Loop project. This project is taking longer than we’d like; the speed with which these collaboration projects are executed is mostly beyond our control. But we’re committed to ensuring the motorcyclist community is represented in all phases of these projects.
Motorcycling Safety Guide
Safer Journeys for Motorcycling on New Zealand Roads has now been released. Download a copy (.pdf, 3.27MB, 81 pages). The next phase of work is the Making Roads Motorcycle Friendly project, using section 5 of the Safer Journeys document as a basis for an education/information programme for road designers and maintainers, so that road design and maintenance has a better focus on safety for motorcyclists.
SAFER VEHICLES
The Visibility Project
TRL Ltd. have now completed their review of current research and literature about motorcycle visibility, to identify specific visibility projects with demonstrated results in other countries.
You can read the report and give us your feedback here.
SAFER ROAD USERS
Council believes that getting all road users involved in motorcycle safety issues is critical for bringing the crash rate down. With this in mind, we are currently developing a long-range plan for a number of projects that we think will get motorcyclists and other road users more involved in making our roads safer for motorcycling.
We’ll let you know when these projects are scoped and we’ll ask for your input and feedback as we get them underway.