Increase in Motorcycle Accidents Prompts Talks

According to a traffic police inspector, training programs are at odds with real city road conditions.

By Yekaterina Portnova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: July 18, 2012 (Issue # 1718)

As the city’s traffic jams get worse and worse, increasing numbers of city residents are turning to more compact forms of transport such as scooters and motorbikes that enable drivers to bypass lines of cars and other larger vehicles. But as the number of two-wheeled vehicles on the roads increases, so is the number of accidents involving these alternative forms of transport.

As the State Duma considers amendments to the Road Traffic Safety Law, representatives of the traffic police and local legislators met with driving instructors and members of biker movements in the city Monday to discuss ways to improve road safety and traffic volumes.

According to statistics cited at the meeting, the number of road accidents in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast involving bikers increased in the past six months by 44 incidents to 336, in which 15 died and 160 were injured). In the same period, there were 206 accidents involving scooter-riders, in which six died — three more than in the same period last year — and 125 were injured). The number of accidents involving cyclists was 213.

Participants of the panel discussion talked about creating subcategories of vehicles and an individual M-category for scooter and moped-drivers, or creating an entire new system of training for them.

Alexei Vereshchagin, senior traffic police inspector for special assignments in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, said that existing training programs are at odds with real conditions on the city roads, and that it is therefore extremely important to introduce an exam on the real roads, not only theory exams and exams in test grounds. Both driving instructors present at the discussion agreed that these changes were necessary.

Sergei Pekutko, the manager of a motorcycle driving school and an instructor, suggested a more concrete format for motorbike and moped driving tests.

“Students could ride a practice motorcycle on the road, and an instructor would follow behind in a car, giving them instructions via radio communication,” he proposed.

Pekutko also drew attention to the fact that there is not currently a rigorous training program for A-category (motorcycle) driving tests, like the obligatory 50-hour program for B-category licenses. “The unpreparedness of motorcycle and scooter drivers puts them in danger,” he said.

“At our school we make safety videos for the Internet where we warn new drivers of basic dangers and rules of driving a motorbike on the roads, we organize free training sessions on large sites that are open to everyone, not only our students, and every week 50 to 100 people attend them, but it’s not enough. There needs to be an integrated database of training and educational materials.”

The concept editor of the biker magazine Ride, Dmitry Gusev, who for the last 18 months has been working on his own project for a new federal road safety law, said that road safety should be based on at least five main factors: Road quality, adjacent infrastructure, traffic organization, driver training and the technical condition of vehicles.

In the presence of all the discussion’s participants, Gusev submitted his draft bill to Alexander Kobrinsky, a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Kobrinsky said that the State Duma is not very well-disposed to regional legislative initiatives. In response to questions from journalists regarding how long it could take for the bill to reach the State Duma, the deputy said that when the Legislative Assembly resumes work in September, the project will be examined and discussed, then sent to the State Duma by New Year at the very earliest. Kobrinsky declined to say how much time it could take the Duma to consider the project.

“The time periods involved are not short, but the goal is worth [the wait],” he said.