Letter: Road Safety Week is an empty gesture for motorcyclists
A letter from Martyn Boyd:
Minister for infrastructure John O’Dowd said recently when launching Road Safety Week 2024: “Road safety is an issue for all of us…. Every single week, at least one person – a mum, a dad, a son, a daughter, a friend - is not coming home to their family and their loved ones.”
This feels like an empty platitude if you are one of Northern Ireland’s thousands of motorcyclists.
As an officially designated vulnerable road user group (VRUG), along with pedestrians, equestrians and cyclists, motorcyclists are entitled to a parity of consideration for their needs in terms of a safe road environment.
The Department for Infrastructure includes Motorcycle Action Group UK (MAG-UK) as a stakeholder in representing those rights and needs and sought our input to the 2022 NI Road Safety Review.
MAG-UK provided a motorcyclist’s perspective on road safety, along with several reasonable and sensible suggestions on how it could be improved at a relatively low cost without compromising anyone else’s safety and help to enhance the general road safety landscape in the long term.
The department completely ignored us. When the current Road Safety Strategy was published, MAG (and therefore motorcyclists) were not even informed, and none of our recommendations were included in it.
Motorcyclists were not even told of the launch of Road Safety Week; our participation and perspective were not invited and, we believe, are not wanted because we are not sufficiently valued as road users.
Along with cyclists, we face many of the same hazards and issues on our roads. So, as it is quite right that cyclists’ issues are fully addressed, why aren’t ours? We comprise almost 3% of road traffic, which is the same as the number of HGVs on our roads, and they aren’t ignored.
Our philosophy is simple: if a road is safe for two-wheelers, then it is safe for any kind of vehicle or user. It’s a truth the Department for Infrastructure refuses to recognise.
Their new strategy is built on the five pillars of the Safe System Approach and says: “The Safe System encourages safer road use in various ways, including through road safety education, training and awareness…".
There are proposals in the strategy for improving cycling, equestrian, and even tractor-driving safety, and they announced funding for a New Driver initiative to help improve young driver safety. All excellent objectives.
But despite admitting one of the challenges of road safety is to tackle concerns surrounding the risk to vulnerable road users and the need to enhance their safety and that part of its mission is: “to enhance the safety of the road system for all road users and reduce the likelihood and/or severity of a collision”, there is not a single one of our recommendations included as an objective nor a single one of our issues addressed directly.
So, Road Safety Week in Northern Ireland is an empty gesture for motorcyclists.
Martyn Boyd, Northern Ireland representative for Motorcycle Action Group UK