[sustran] Re: FW: WHO report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention

[K. Tsourlakis]

At 05:59 ðì 15/4/2004 +0300, you wrote:

>.....................................
>At the IFRTD Executive Committee meeting in November 2003 we had 
>a considered discussion on road safety.   It would seem to me that  
>road traffic injuries are correlated with  the increase in high  
>speed road networks and increased motorisation.  The 'vulnerable  
>road users' (pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists - and perhaps  
>other non-motorised transport users ) are the most at risk but  
>perhaps also the least likely to benefit from motorisation and  
>highways. So, from the perspective of reducing vulnerability of  
>poor people, do we not also need a road traffic injury prevention  
>strategy that questions the dominant paradigm of high speed  
>motorisation?
>.....................................


Motorcyclists are NOT non-motorised transport users. Bunching up motorcyclists next to pedestrians, cyclists and other non-motorised transport users is a HUGE logical and methodological mistake. And motorcyclists DO benefit from motorisation and highways. Especially benefited are the larger ones, bought (at least to some extent) always as entertainment toys (e.g. the only use of 70HP, 80HP, 100HP - or even more - motorcycle power is to break speed limits) - but smaller ones have certainly their share too.

Actually motorcycles pollute like cars do (even electrical ones pollute indirectly), are noisy (usually more than cars), kill pedestrians and their users (at a rate 10-40 times more frequently than cars do) and are not usable (not even as mere passengers like cars are) from a large part of the population (the most vulnerable one: babies, visually and kinetically impaired, elderlies etc). 

Overuse of cars has certainly destroyed world cities and brought about many problems - it is trivial and needless to mention them on a list like this one. However there may exist a place even for them in an ideal and rationally designed transport system - e.g. in sparsely populated areas, for the transport of people on special needs, or under some particular forms like the controversial caresharing scheme. But what advantage would motorcycle present over bicycle use, combined with proper mass transport (bike racks, train facilites for bikes etc) for longer distances? Has anybody ever thought if the total ban of motorcycle were a better solution to the vulnerability and the rest of the problems they present?

In Greece motorcycle use has contributed (perhaps more than cars) to the oppression of pedestrians, the miserable situation of the public spaces of the city and the environmental and healthy problems (you may take a look at http://www.pezh.gr/english/photo4.htm ). Because of the deliberate encouragement of motorcycle use through a number of privileges (the last one is the right to use legally dedicated bus lanes) their number proliferated (in Athens their number is estimated to 1 mil - compared to 2 mil. of cars) while they are used only by a small (but mostly fanatical and politically influential) part of the population and contribute according to studies less than 8% to the total mobility. I am sure there are similar "horror stories" about motorcycles from Asia cities. Anybody to speak up?




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