Australian Motorcycle Council chairman Shaun Lennard hopes to address how roads can be made safer for riders at an international motorcycle safety workshop.
The online event is being hosted by the transport arm of the OECD, the International Transport Forum, in conjunction with the Swedish Transport Administration.
The invitation-only event of 150 participants was originally due to be hosted in Stockholm, in June 2020, but was postponed due to COVID-19 and later redesigned into a series of online workshops.
Shaun has been invited to participate in the sessions on road infrastructure, road management and speed management on 17 June 2021.
“The idea of making roads safer for motorcycles is not new,” he says.
“There are some great ideas we have either been talking about, or have seen in practice, for more than 10 years. But things continue to be largely ad hoc.
“One good example is the Austroads Guide Infrastructure Improvements to Reduce Motorcycle Casualties. This was prepared and released in 2016.
“The AMC was closely involved with the development of the guide, and it contains best-practice information. But five years later, it’s still not a default reference point for most Australian road authorities. It should be. I aim to speak about this at the workshop.”
The workshop also builds on the ITF’s similar event in Lillehammer, Norway, in 2008.
However, Shaun says follow-up and a commitment to actions from the Lillehammer workshop has been lacking and he hopes this will be addressed this year.