To launch their recently announced involvement in the motorcycle safety arena, the National transportation Safety Board conducted a two day meeting in September of 2006.  The public forum included a wide array of motorcycle safety domains and promised to lead to positive resutls for motorcyclists.  The motorcycle community was anxiously anticipating the release of the NTSB's recommendations.

One year later, in a public meeting held on September 11, 2007 The National Transportation Safety Board issued a series of disappointing motorcycle safety recommendations.  The NTSB’s recommendations were focused on three areas of motorcycle safety: the November 2000 NAMS recommendations, motorcycle safety data collection and reporting, and helmet laws.  The recommendations were issued to two federal agencies and the fifty states.

Although we do not always agree on every issue, the members of the motorcycle rights community have uniformly expressed adamant disappointment with the NTSB’s recommendations.  Inspired by the multitude of voiced opposition, a constituent team from CBA/ABATE of NC was organized to decide on our response, and two members were dispatched to Washington, DC to voice our concern to NC’s legislators.  The team (Cindy “Fre” Hodges, & “Doc Ski”)  was able to arrange appointments with every one of NC’s legislators' offices except one.  During the trip we met continuously for two full days with NC’s legislators (or their administrative staff involved in transportation issues). 

The results of those meetings are still being reported by the offices of our legislators.  To date, we have heard back from several offices and the responses are positive.  A full report on the actions of each of our legislators will be forthcoming shortly.  Today’s entry will focus on the published recommendations of the NTSB, and our arguments in response to the inadequacies.

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The NTSB issued the following seven recommendations:

National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety

To the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

1. Reprioritize the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety recommendations based on objective criteria including known safety outcomes.
2. Following completion of the reprioritization of the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety requested in Safety Recommendation H-07-XX, implement an action plan for states and others, such as federal agencies, manufacturers, insurance organizations, and advocacy groups to carry out those recommendations that are determined to be of high priority.

To the 50 states and the District of Columbia:

3. Provide information to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the effectiveness of your motorcycle safety efforts to assist NHTSA with its effort to reprioritize the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety recommendations.

Motorcycle Safety Data

To the Federal Highway Administration:

4. Following the 2007 Motorcycle Travel Symposium, develop guidelines for the states to use to gather accurate motorcycle registrations and motorcycle vehicle miles traveled data.  The guidelines should include information on the various methods to collect registrations and vehicle miles traveled data and how these methods can be put into practice.

Motorcycle Helmets

To the three states without motorcycle helmet laws:

5. Require that all persons shall wear a Department of Transportation Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 218-compliant motorcycle helmet while riding (operating), or as a passenger on any motorcycle.

To the 27 states and 1 territory with partial helmet laws:

6. Amend current laws to require that all persons shall wear a Department of Transportation Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 218-compliant motorcycle helmet while riding (operating), or as a passenger on any motorcycle.

To the 8 states, the District of Columbia, and the 4 territories that have universal motorcycle helmet laws but do not specifically require FMVSS 218-compliant helmets:

7. Amend current laws to specify that all persons shall wear a Department of Transportation Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 218-compliant motorcycle helmet while riding (operating), or as a passenger on any motorcycle.

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Our Response to The NTSB Recommendations:

1.  The Motorcycle Community is disappointed with the recommendations of the NTSB.  Motorcyclists believed that since the NTSB is the scientific arm of the safety community, their inclusion in the motorcycle safety community would bring valid facts and rigorous scientific investigation to the efforts of the motorcycle safety community. 

Instead:

The weak and ineffective motorcycle safety recommendations issued by the NTSB suggest that they are just another layer of the bureaucratic self-preservation network. 

2.  The motorcycling community had high hopes for the NTSB’s involvement because:

           The NTSB has a reputation for being meticulous in the pursuit of their investigations.  When an airplane crashes and debris is scattered over a large area, the NTSB has been known to take several months to systematically explore the area, locate all the pieces, and even reconstruct the fallen aircraft, before making any decisions about the cause of the crash, and/or issuing specific recommendations to resolve the problem.  The NTSB has investigated more than 130,000 air, rail, and commercial carrier crashes.  We anticipated that the NTSB would be equally meticulous and comprehensive in pursuing recommendations related to motorcycle safety.

Instead;

         The NTSB treated motorcycle safety like a “second-class-member” of the safety community.  The NTSB held one public safety forum, and investigated 6 motorcycle accidents (in their forty year history) before issuing recommendations that; ignore many of the issues discussed in the forum, are founded on obsolete research studies conducted in a traffic environment that no longer exists, and support a “crash-mitigation” safety paradigm that has been killing motorcyclists for over 35 years.

3.   Since the staff at the NTSB is filled with PhD scientists who understand the importance of, and can evaluate, scientific rigor and violations of the scientific process;   Motorcyclists expected a comprehensive and rigorous scientific evaluation of the safety issues at hand.

Instead:

            The NTSB apparently ignored the lack of scientific rigor, and violations of scientific process being used by government-agencies that sanction the obvious misuse of statistics (i.e., data mining), and violate numerous scientific principals (i.e., cause and effect conclusions drawn from descriptive data).  The NTSB also failed to consider the obvious inadequacies of formulating safety policy on research studies conducted more than 35 years ago, in traffic conditions that are radically dissimilar to current highway conditions. 

The NTSB’s recommendation to the FHWA for improving the scientific process is inadequate and embarrassing.  Evaluating alternative methods for collecting VMT data is one small detail in a broad-based venue of glaring scientific inadequacies.

4.  When the NTSB entered into the motorcycle safety arena we anticipated a new perspective on motorcycle safety.   When Mr. Rosenker announced (at Northwestern University, and again in the latest NTSB report) that the safety community had reached an “impasse in fatality reduction through crash mitigation”, and; that “a new approach to highway safety would focus on proactive Crash Prevention measures,” motorcyclists rejoiced.  We expected that the obsolete and dangerous “passive protection” paradigm that has been killing motorcyclists for 35 years would be abandoned, and that measures that prevent crashes would become the focus of safety professionals and, …the salvation of motorcyclists.

Instead:

            The NTSB recommended that the NHTSA “re-prioritize” the NAMS.   There was no recommendation to implement a new direction (the pro-active crash avoidance strategies provided in the NAMS).  The “re-prioritize NAMS” recommendation lacked any focus at all.  Leaving the general public and NHTSA clueless as to the meaning of the term “re-prioritize”.

The NTSB recommendations to the FHWA were irrelevant.   There is no reason to believe that the FHWA would not implement the results of the 2007 Motorcycle Travel Symposium.  The stated purpose of the symposioum was to develop guidelines for the states to use in gathering accurate motorcycle registrations and motorcycle vehicle miles traveled data. 

The NTSB has focused all of their recommendations on continuing to pursue the inadequate passive-protection safety paradigm; a paradigm which they, themselves, recently declared obsolete and ineffective for all vehicles and, for which there is substantial evidence of, a 35 year history of being dangerous and ineffective for motorcyclists.

5.  The motorcycle community anticipated that the inclusion of the NTSB in our safety community would serve as a deterrent to the spread of false propaganda by federal agencies, and; the spread of tax-payer funded lobbying of state legislators by the bureaucratic recipients of federal monies administered by the NHTSA.

Instead:

The NTSB joined in illegal federal-agency-lobbying of the states.  The NTSB’s recommendation to individual states regarding the implementation of mandatory-universal-helmet-use laws is in direct violation of the powers guaranteed to individual states in the US Constitution.  This “states-rights” issue has been a point of federal discussion several times.  

The NHTSA has been told by the Congress of the US that this is a state’s rights issue.  The NHTSA has been directed by congressional proclamation to refrain from lobbying states to comply with helmet law recommendations.   Recently federal legislators emphasized this conclusion by removing Senator Lautenberg’s proposed amendment requiring states to implement mandatory universal helmet laws. 

Will the US Congress have to reprimand or sanction the NTSB too?

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"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." Patrick Henry