Project Leader
Guy Vickerman
Background
A present (2021), we lose roughly 1100 persons in Australia to road trauma yearly, not to mention the injuries to persons, property and the huge demand for repairs, treatment and the psychological damage inflicted on families and the workplace. The idea is to address this by putting forward ideas and systems, integrated into the fabric of our society to mitigate this issue if not totally remove these statistics from our society. This issue of poor road awareness has been going on in our society since the start of vehicular transport. Some innovations in the history have had a significant positive impact. Seat belts, disc brakes and collapsible steering columns to suggest a few. The only issue here is that people become more and more reliant on the technical fix rather than their own self-preservation instinct. The modern car only exacerbates this problem with air bags, proximity alarms and self-steering by the vehicle to supposedly keep the driver/passenger ‘safe’! Abrogation of personal responsibility is high on the agenda.
Project Description
With the help of the community and socially minded groups in politics and public life we have a vision to significantly reduce the number of road fatalities and injuries in Australia. This will take a generation to effect change in culture and behaviours. Many public institutions like RACQ, Rotary, Main Roads, Police and numerous others try to lay the foundations in primary schools and private courses, but is this too late in the development of the child to do as much good as could be done.
Early cultural changes explain some strange behaviour, for example, Australians eat Vegemite and the Dutch eat pickled fish and chocolate for breakfast and perhaps demonstrates why it may work that we start this process very young.
Status
April’22
•Research underway.
Join in with us and add your input and expertise and maybe lead a project of your own
Tip 1
Many riders are comfortable to rely on “engine braking” to slow their bike on a familiar road.
Tip 3
True control of deceleration is achieved when the rider uses the front and rear brakes as needed .
Tip 2
“Engine Braking” is an unpredictable science and is influenced by many variables.( For this reason many models of bikes are fitted with “slipper” type clutches.