Area of Opportunity 11: Management of Motorcycle Safety

5.11Area of Opportunity 11: Management of Motorcycle Safety

Recommendation 11: The unsustainable⁶⁷ contribution to deaths and injury of motorcycles in Brazil must be recognized, and the safety of riders must be addressed.

Recommendation 11.1: A number of road related actions are recommended to assist motorcycle safety:

Creation of motorcycle specific blackspots engineering programs at federal and state levels to address motorcycle blackspots with treatments which work for motorcycles. These treatments are often different than for other vehicles;

Reduce and enforce speed limits on roads with serious motorcycle crash rates since crashes even at low speed can be deadly for motorcyclists;

Increased use of properly signalized speed humps around serious motorcycle crash locations designed specifically to reduce speeds of motorcycles, including on approach to rural curves. These should be located right across the road width including the shoulders, to avoid motorcycles riding around them on the road shoulder, and designed to slow motorcycles;

Examine the feasibility of adding of motorcycle protection on guardrail barriers where motorcycles have hit the existing guardrail.

Recommendation 11.2: Create dedicate and compulsory motorcycle lanes on relevant multi-lane routes with high volume motorcycle traffic.

Recommendation 11.3: Investigate the feasibility of subsidies to shift riders into cars or subsidized costs of public transport, based on the huge society costs saved in reducing motorcycle use.

Recommendation 11.4: Investigate and steadily remove indirect subsidies for motorcycles. Policy on pricing should consider whole of society costs not just user costs. Motorcycles (the most dangerous and thus costly form of transport to the community) are inadvertently subsidized, encouraging use and thus increasing deaths, injuries and costs to the community. This may occur through compulsory insurance costs being less than real risk (including the costs to society of at fault riders who injury themselves which are not covered in insurance but is borne by society), registration costs being lower than warranted. In net insurance and registration costs should reflect the real cost to the community.

Recommendation 11.5: Avoid provision of training, especially in schools, which adds to risk by creating earlier licensing of motorcycle riders, given the evidence for the lack of Road Safety benefits of motorcycle training⁶⁸. Rider training and rider licensing should be provided at a later age.

Recommendation 11.6: Require a license to ride a 50cc motorcycle. The general regulations on driver’s licenses in the traffic code are silent on the subject of 50cc. Permission to operate these vehicles is covered elsewhere in the code, where a “municipal license” is established for the purpose. It is recommended that this permission be included the general regulations on ordinary driver’s licenses and that tests and mechanisms be established in the Code itself so that the applicant is required to meet certain conditions in order to receive a license (similar to those for other motorcycles). Responsibility for the management of the licensing of 50cc riders should be undertaken through normal licensing processes.

Recommendation 11.7: A number of enforcement related actions are recommended to assist with motorcycle safety:

Enforce pressure for motorcycle and two-wheelers registration;

Use technology which specifically targets enforcement of motorcycle speeding (which is a pervasively observed behavior in Brazil), and reduce the tolerance on speed enforcement of motorcycles to the lowest technically possible minimum on the basis of the large additional risk to motorcyclists (e.g., infringements issued for any speed of 3 or more kilometers above the limit);

Enforce the blatant absence of helmet wearing by motorcycle riders in many areas of Brazil, but especially in rural regions. In many remote areas and rural cities of Brazil visited the large majority of motorcycle riders were not wearing helmets. Enforcement must be sustained until helmet wearing approaches 100%, and failure to see improvement (which should be monitored with helmet wearing surveys, undertaken by the Lead Agency) should be seen as a failure of local Police to undertake the task;

Disseminate clear warning messages at least one month in advance of the above pieces of increased enforcement to ensure riders know these change are coming rather than feel tricked.

Recommendation 11.8: Adopt a strong Graduated Licensing Scheme (GLS) for motorcycles in particular for the young. Graduated Licensing schemes provide gradual release from the restrictions of learning towards obtaining a full license, usually over several years. Such schemes have been evaluated and have been found to provide strong reductions in young vehicle controller fatal and injury crash involvements.

The increased focus on enforcement of helmet use in all areas of Brazil (including rural and remote areas) preceded by communications warning of the enforcement (part of recommendation 11.7) are clear early wins for Road Safety in Brazil, and should be progressed as a short term action by federal and state police. All other recommendations in this area of opportunity are medium term except recommendation 11.2, which is longer term.

5.12Area of Opportunity 12: Management of Vehicles

Recommendation 12: (a) Facilitate safer new vehicles in Brazil through regulation to higher safety standards, financial incentives, government fleet purchase policy and community education to create demand for safety. (b) Maintain the safety of the existing fleet through safety checks, and incentive schemes to move to newer vehicles.

Recommendation 12.1: Regulate for a more stringent vehicle safety standards. One effective way to achieve this is to harmonize with large vehicle markets by adopting European standards for vehicle safety. This saves complex work in creating separate standards, and maintains a high safety standard, as well as promoting harmonization for flow of vehicle at less cost. The Brazilian vehicle manufacturing industry already produces vehicles to European standards as well as lower safety standard vehicles for Brazil.

Recommendation 12.2: Brazil should support Latin NCAP, initiate a program to promote Latin NCAP ratings and car safety to the public and to companies as a key factor in vehicle choice, and ensure that safety rating information is readily available. Latin NCAP ratings should be used in press releases and media events to criticize those producing less safe cars and promote those making safer cars.

Recommendation 12.3: Adopt standards requiring acoustic seat belt warning in new vehicles for all seating positions , with a view to significantly increasing the use of seat belts (which is low in Brazil in front seats and even lower in rear seats).

Recommendation 12.4: Adopt Federal and State and Municipal Government fleet purchase policies for safer vehicles by purchasing only the safest Latin NCAP rated vehicles in each vehicle use class (sedan, SUV, etc.) in order to:

Improve safety for government employees, delivering both Road Safety and occupational health and safety gains;

Send a message to the community that Road Safety matters and that safe vehicle choice will contribute to improving Road Safety;

Improve the fleet of second-hand vehicles as the government owned vehicles go into the used car market;

Apply pressure to manufacturers to produce safe vehicles.

Recommendation 12.5: Examine the feasibility of offering incentives for safer cars, through reduced registration costs and insurance costs (with commensurate increases in cost for the least safe cars). These fees can also be adjusted to create disincentives for keeping older (less safe) vehicles. Reconsider the current incentives to maintain old vehicles created by existing policies of removal or reduction of compulsory third party injury insurance for older vehicles.

Recommendation 12.6: Examine the feasibility of regulation for safer heavy vehicles. Heavy vehicle safety can also be improved via better cabin strength, effective speed limiting, more effective breaking systems, more vigilant checking of tachographs for enforcement, and under-run guards to protect occupants of other vehicles in the event of a collision.

Recommendation 12.7: Continue vehicle safety inspections, although mechanical failures rarely cause crashes. Parking officers should infringe parked vehicles which are unregistered or have unsafe tires.

All recommendations in area of opportunity 12 are medium to longer term.