New South Wales has recorded a 34 per cent increase in motorcyclist deaths in 2024s. The new data sheds light on what experts say is a national issue.
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00:00As you highlighted, in 2019, the year before COVID, and then in 2020, motorcycle deaths
00:07in Australia reached their lowest that had ever been recorded.
00:11But in the three, now four years since there's been this slight increase, it is difficult
00:15sometimes to compare statistics from just one year to another, but certainly that spike,
00:21you might call it in New South Wales over the past 12 months, is of concern.
00:26Is there an explanation?
00:27Do we know why this is happening?
00:29Well, look, I wish I had the simple answer, and road safety authorities and advocates
00:35like myself have been looking at the situation really over the last two or three years.
00:39I was at the conference of the Australian Road Safety, sorry, the Australian Road Safety
00:44Conference in Hobart in October last year, and this very question about increase in the
00:49road time, not only for motorcyclists, but most road users over the last two or three
00:53years post COVID is certainly of concern.
00:55Sean, when I think of motorbikes, I think of food delivery drivers.
01:00There are more of them on our roads than ever.
01:03Could their increased ubiquity be contributing to these numbers?
01:06Look, there's two or three factors that are probably prevalent over the last couple of
01:12years, but we really need some proper research to give a clear picture.
01:16So some of the information, say, from our organisation, you know, is what we believe
01:20or we might sort of hear anecdotally from information we get from our different state
01:24and territory member organisations.
01:27Certainly though, the significant growth in food delivery drivers in the major capital
01:33cities is clearly an issue.
01:36It is one of the issues in the increase in motorcycle casualty crashes, but it certainly
01:41doesn't account for that percentage increase of over 30% that you're talking about.
01:45There are other factors as well.
01:47What are some of these other factors?
01:48Who is most particularly at risk of a motorcycle accident resulting in death?
01:54Yes, well look, the term that's used to describe pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist is vulnerable
02:01road users.
02:02Now, a lot of motorcycle people don't necessarily like the use of that term, but that is the
02:05reality that if you're involved in a crash, in fact, even on your own in hitting some
02:09sort of object, but certainly in the impact with a larger vehicle, the injuries sustained
02:14by riders can be very serious.
02:18So some of the other factors, it's interesting, there seems to have been, we've heard an example
02:22of the anecdotal information I mentioned a minute or two ago.
02:26So illicit drugs have been a factor in motorcycle crashes and indeed for all road users of around
02:32about one in four fatal crashes.
02:34Again, that's across all road users, which is quite alarming, although I saw statistics
02:39from Victoria, so it used to be around one in five, that has increased to one in four.
02:45Another area where we are hearing reports from the different states is there seems to
02:51be, or there is, it's reported by police authorities from a couple of states, an increase in serious,
02:58including fatal crashes, involving people on either or a combination of stolen motorcycles,
03:04people riding without a proper licence or riding at extreme excessive speeds or a combination
03:10of all those factors.
03:11Right, so some people riding unlicensed, but in terms of licences, could one of the solutions
03:16be to increase the amount of training that people have to do in order to get a licence?
03:21Yeah, look, it's interesting, and there's been significant changes and improvements
03:26across Australia to motorcycle rider training, really over the past 40 years, since the advent
03:31of structured training in the 1980s.
03:34What we've got now is a situation where there is a different curriculum from state to state,
03:39so a couple sort of mirror each other.
03:42So I think, you know, always looking for, you know, what is the best practice, what's
03:46emerging potentially out of, say, Europe in improvements.
03:51What we are wary about, though, is making sure that you don't finish up with a training
03:56scheme that's a complete overload of information, or indeed is actually prohibitively expensive
04:02for people to participate in.
04:06Some bits of motorcycle riding, it's one of those things you really learn by doing.