GAPS = TRAPS

It’s the prediction that wherever there is space & time for something hazardous to occur, then there is a potential that it will actually happen. Knowing this and being prepared minimises the likelihood of being surprised in the event of it actually happening.

Whether it is a vehicle waiting at a junction, vehicles in moving or stationary traffic or vehicles moving towards you or away from you on straight roads or bends…knowing there is a gap means that gap can possibly be filled by something else. If you are aiming to occupy the same space at the same time then there has been a prediction failure and the result will be a collision. Continue reading →

As part of the ongoing engagement process I have developed an initial poll of six questions to gauge rider opinions on some riding rights & safety issues. The polls have been designed to reflect the possible opinion variance and offer balanced options to choose from.

The poll shall be ongoing for the foreseeable future with the current results being easily viewable and you will be able to measure your own responses with the rest of the response pool. Continue reading →

So often is the case, we lie in wait until a solution to a problem is discovered or more so until the solution is implemented and is working.

If we look at motorcycle safety as an overarching concern, then it is with merit to identify certain issues that do or may cause motorcycle accidents…in fact we could extend this further into general road safety or any other area of concern and apply the same principles.

There are of course certain triggers that we may perceive as being the main causes and we may even campaign to effect changes to improve our position. Continue reading →

Over many years of responding to motorcycle accidents, I have often wondered how much of the cause information and data extracted from scenes is actually made available to the public.

Of course there are general statements & causal factors and accident statistics that are readily available, but do we ever get the specifics of particular motorcycle accidents and how thoroughly are the root causes investigated.

One of the major problems of road collision investigation is that it rarely looks beyond the immediate cause and contributing factors are not given the prominence they may deserve.

What we need to ask is: :What caused the cause?”

In other transport collision investigations there is much more investigation into root causes and this information is generally disseminated through the user groups & industry…such as in aviation, although thankfully other transport modes tend to see much less frequent requirement for investigation and this is probably why they can invest so much more time on each one. Continue reading →

How do we prevent ourselves from being caught out by a series of events that ultimately lead us to having an accident?

Once we have been taught how to do something, then we will never forget how to do it!… Wrong! Anything that has been learnt and requires some conscious thought can be ‘unlearned’, forgotten and even misplaced or misunderstood with the passage of time. Even something so ‘natural’ as speaking can be forgotten if we do not speak for many years. There are plenty of examples of this from forgetting a second language or forgetting foreign words to forgetting a first and only language.

We are kidding ourselves if we believe that we will always remember skills or knowledge without any form of practice, recurrent training and self awareness that we need to brush up on our skills and knowledge. Continue reading →

by Duncan MacKillop

There’s a strange moment of peace as you sail over the bonnet of the car that’s just pulled out in front of you. You have left the horrible splintering, crunching sound behind leaving just the faint whistle of the wind around your helmet as you begin to contemplate the next few seconds of your existence. You know that from this point on there is absolutely nothing you can do to affect what’s going to happen next and that whatever does happen is going to happen according to the immutable laws of Newtonian physics. I had plenty of time to see that it was the bonnet of a Hillman Avenger that I sailed over in what I eventually learnt was called a SMIDSY, but it was the fast approaching, hard and unforgiving Tarmac in front of me that really caught my attention. When the landing did finally happen it wasn’t what you would call elegant in any way. First to hit with a sickening cracking, crunching sound was my left shoulder followed in short order by the crack of the rather low-tech Stadium helmet I was wearing and then I can’t really remember much after that. Continue reading →

by Alf Gasparro

Founder of HELI BIKES – Motorcycle Safety Initiative

UK Air Ambulance Pilot

Whilst working at the forefront of prehospital emergency medicine for many years on UK air ambulances, I have responded to hundreds of motorcycle accidents dealing with the full spectrum of injuries, fatalities and causes.

A few realisations gained prominence quite early on in my career and those still remain to this day as I continue to attend regular motorcycle incidents, along with the rest of the emergency services all over the globe! Continue reading →