Letter: MLAs could forgo pay rise and put cash into making roads safer

Your editor, Ben Lowry, reported on his experience of using a driverless taxi in the USA and fervently hoped to see driverless vehicles in the UK as soon as possible (I was thrilled to use driverless cars in US and await them in NI, August 23).

And your editorial on Tuesday mentioned a reader who found it difficult and unsafe to cross a junction of the A1 due to sightlines being obscured by long grass (No wonder there is little money to repair potholes, August 26).

With regard to the editorial, obscured sightlines create extremely hazardous situations on many of our roads and have, unfortunately, led to fatal and very serious collisions. Your reader found it unsafe to cross the A1, presumably in a car. Just think how much more hazardous that would be for a motorcyclist.

Last summer, at a roundabout close to me, any motorcyclist would have been easily hidden from a driver's view because the grass and weeds were so long.

Motorcyclists are a designated vulnerable road user group (VRUG), along with pedestrians, equestrians and cyclists.

Our vehicle does not have the physical protection measures like airbags and roll cages found in cars. In any collision, no matter who is at fault, a motorcyclist comes off worst.

Dangerous road defects (which have caused 11 motorcyclist collisions in recent years), many of which pose greater hazards to riders than to drivers, obstructed sightlines, and other road safety issues are why I recently had a constructive face-to-face meeting with infrastructure minister Liz Kimmins.

Motorcycle Action Group believes that if a road is maintained safely for a motorcyclist, then it will be safe for every type of road user.

The DfI is strapped for cash. I suggested that improvements can be made with not necessarily more money but by thinking differently and perhaps spending available funds more wisely. It would, though, be much better for the Assembly to get its budget under control. A welcome gesture would be for MLAs to forgo their pay rise and legislate for those funds to go specifically towards minister Kimmins’ road maintenance budget.

With regard to Ben Lowry's article, he did hint that he had concerns about driverless technology. Motorcyclists' lives may depend on getting the technology right. The government has issued a consultation on automated vehicle safety principles, and the Motorcycle Action Group UK (MAG) has submitted a response to it. We propose a practical framework to help deliver the promised road safety benefits with specific measurable standards, ensuring motorcyclists benefit from these improvements.

The law requires vehicles to match “careful and competent human drivers”. We propose adopting the Space, Surprise, Consequence (SSC) model to define competent driving objectively. This model provides measurable criteria, including dynamic speed management, proactive hazard anticipation, and consequence-aware decision-making.

The most common cause of motorcycle-involved collisions right across the UK is “failed to look properly” by a driver, particularly at junctions and when making turns across a rider's path. This is a systemic failure in hazard perception that current driver training fails to address adequately.

Motorcyclists present a unique challenge for automated systems. Unlike pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians who are also vulnerable road users, we share every type of road with cars, vans, trucks, buses, etc and at the same speeds as those vehicles. Therefore, motorcyclists must be a specifically named category in automated driving technology operating principles.

MAG’s full response to the automated driving is available at:

https://wiki.mag-uk.org/images/9/98/MAG_response_to_AV_Statement_of_Safety_Principles_Call_for_Evidence_-_August_2025.pdf

Martyn Boyd, NI representative for Motorcycle Action Group UK