The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is proposing to launch a study program equipping 160 motorcycle riders with cameras, GPS, and other data recording devices in order to track riding behavior and how riders avoid--or at times fail to avoid--crashes.
Says the NHTSA proposal, "Knowledge of both how riders successfully avoid crashes and of behaviors that correlate with and contribute to crash risk is crucial to developing effective countermeasures to reduce motorcycle crashes and fatalities."
A very similar study is already underway, however, and in a comment issued today, Jeff Hennie, Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs for the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, remarked that, "Tracking volunteer riders and collecting some best practices for countermeasures is a great idea, but as with every study there will be some technical and logistical bugs to work out over the course of the study. It seems to me that it would be wise to wait on the MSF results and use them to craft a better, sturdier study."
On the face of it the proposal for a "naturalistic" study would seem to be an excellent idea. In fact, however, it raises several questions.
Many in the motorcycle community have for years called for a new motorcycle crash study to update the Hurt Study that was conducted starting in 1976 and published in 1981. To that end, the American Motorcyclist Association and others worked to raise funding for a new study to be conducted through Oklahoma State University (OSU) under the under the leadership of Dr. Samir Ahmed. The Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) also took pledges from its members to fund the study, provided it met their criteria for validity.
As it developed, sufficient funding for the study as envisioned was not forthcoming, so the extent of the effort was reduced. Dr. Ahmed conducted a statistical analysis that showed that the reduced study would still produce valid results, but the MIC was not persuaded. It decided not to release its funds for the study and Dr. Ahmed pressed on with the funding he had. That study is now in progress.
In the meantime, the MIC decided to fund its own naturalistic study with 100 riders being outfitted with the recording and data-tracking gear. That study is also now underway.
All of this leads to two questions. Why would NHTSA choose to essentially duplicate what the MIC is already doing? Why would NHTSA not funnel the money it intends to spend on this study to the OSU program to enable it to more nearly conduct its study as originally envisioned? Dr. Ahmed, while pressing ahead with limited funding, made it very clear he hopes to gain additional funding as he goes along and expand the effort.
Comments on the NHTSA proposal are now being solicited, and information on the proposal and how to comment are available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-16/pdf/2011-29361.pdf.
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