A Motorcycle Safety and Transport Policy Framework
Compliance and Achieving Behaviour Change
It is also important that enforcement plays a relevant and appropriate role within the framework for the occasions where offending behaviour is beyond the scope of education. This should be proportionate to the risks to individuals, property and the degree of seriousness of the offence.
Highways England’s proactive support for compliance and enforcement activity can supplement existing traditional methods by exploiting advances in technology and the latest techniques across the strategic network.
A proliferation of high quality action video cameras such as dashboard cameras, helmet cameras and CCTV has seen clips of dangerous and anti-social rider behaviour ‘going viral’ on social media. This has increased negative attitudes and stereotypical views of motorcycling and motorcyclists. There have been a number of recent high profile prosecutions following this type of incident and whilst this is in itself is positive news, the resulting media coverage only gives more exposure of this type of anti-social behaviour and feeds negative stereotypes of motorcycling.
In contrast, positive news stories such as voluntary work done by ‘Bloodbikers’ (The National Association of Blood Bikes) or Motorcycle Outreach, delivering healthcare in Indonesia (and other similar organisations) are unfortunately rarely the subject of media coverage.
Compliance is an essential element in preventing casualties and the partnership has an important part to play in this respect. Achieving a motorcycling population with widespread respect for the rules of the road, rather than being seen as reckless thrill seekers is an important step towards acceptability and wider support. Negative views of motorcyclists in general erode sympathy for the unfortunate victims of road crashes and in turn, make justifying the spending of public funds on motorcycle safety more difficult. Improving general levels of compliance will benefit the overall image of motorcycling and is an important factor which this framework seeks to address.