If you're a motorcyclist, last summer's announcement that a new major motorcycle crash study was finally slated to begin at Oklahoma State University was good news indeed.But it's also proving to be costly; current estimates project a figure somewhere north of $6 million, a dramatic increase from the original amount of $4 million when the new Motorcycle Crash Causation Study was first announced.
At that point, Motorcycle Safety Foundation members pledged over $2 million to match the $2 million in funding granted by the feds. Then, last month, the Motorcycle Industry Council said it would contribute an additional $200,000. When you add this figure to the $2.8 million already in the till from Motorcycle Safety companies, total contributions from the industry now equal $3 million. And it's sorely needed.
The study would end a 26 year drought of motorcycle traffic safety information; the last (and most comprehensive) log of data on the causes of motorcycle accidents came out with the Hurt Study in 1981. In over a quarter of a century, however, a lot has changed. Almost 11 million street bikes have been sold in the U.S., and the rider population has swelled to over 6.5 million. Even more significant is the average age of riders. In 1985, the typical rider was 27 years old. Today, he's 41.
"We need new field research that might help us further refine our safety initiatives," said Tim Buche, president of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation."There's a long list of things that have changed over the years". Motorcyclists still tend to be about 0.5% of vehicle miles traveled, Buche said, "but motorcycle fatalities are approximately 10% of all roadway fatalities in the United States."
Changes that have cropped up in recent smaller studies show that more fatalities are now related to negotiating a curve prior to a crash, and more deaths are occurring on rural, rather than urban, roadways. The new study will be based at Oklahoma Transportation Center and conducted by Samir Ahmed, the Oklahoma State University civil engineering professor in charge of the research.Unfortunately, due to layers of governmental bureaucracy, the pilot study won't even begin until spring 2008.