Motorcycles on motorways

After a significant reduction in motorcycle mode share through the 1980’s and 2000’s, over the last few years there has been a noticeable upswing in motorcycle usage. This trend has been observed throughout the developing world as born-again motorcyclists get back on their bikes. Given that motorcyclists have the highest crash risk of all modes of travel, with crash rates many times higher than that of cars, this is leading to increasing crash rates and is likely to continue to increase if intervention does not occur. Given this concern the Government have signalled in the Safer Journeys road safety strategy that motorcycle safety is a main road safety focus going forward. The Government is looking to follow the lead of Victoria in Australia which has developed and implemented road safety blackspot programs focused on motorcycle crashes. In this technical note, we consider the increased risks that increasing motorcycle volumes may have on the Auckland motorway network and how this can be mitigated. The Auckland Motorways Motorcycle Safety Strategy has been developed by the Auckland Motorway Alliance to manage and reduce the motorcycle crash risk on the Auckland Motorways. This technical note will discuss the key elements of the strategy, including motorcycle crash trends on the Auckland Motorways, regionally and nationally. Based on the strategy undertaken, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the risk of motorcycle severe injury crashes on Auckland Motorways could be twice as high when compared to the region and the rest of the country. Other factors such as types of objects struck, age groups and motorcycle engine size will also be discussed. Concerns expressed by the motorcycling groups will also be reported and presented. This technical note will discuss the strategies of improvements in areas of engineering, enforcement, education and evaluation that the Auckland Motorway Alliance will strive to achieve. Finally, this technical note will also discuss the potential difficulties and obstacles to improve motorcycle road safety, such as motorcycle data collection and route selection for improvement works.