I want to acknowledge that my thoughts on how to achieve the political goal of reducing the incidence of motorcyclist injury and death evolve constantly, particularly as I conduct my own research and as I hvae read the ideas of others this "Motorcycle Awareness Month." But this has got to be a year round effort until we can ride free of the idiotic antics of ignorant auto drivers. I don't think that most Governors or policy makers clearly understand either the problem or the solution, so we must first educate them if we are to ultimately acheive our goal of educating auto drivers.

We first begin by educating ourselves. My main research interest over the past several months has been on the subject of inattentional blindness, a subject on which I've also had some correspondence with the theorists, and I have tentatively discussed some of my preliminary thoughts, but as yet not firm conclusions, on this forum. I've also had the opportunity to read the thoughts of others, on this site and on other sites. Earlier today Bruce directed me to BikerNation.net which I also recommend to everyone as another source of biker issue education and biker advocacy.

As the result of the discussions of others on this site this month I've been informed of the varying opinions with regard to injury penalty laws, as one example. I have thought about their potential merit, including as I analyze it, how such laws might be phrased to contribute to make motorcycles "relevant" to auto drivers.

Cutting to the core of the postings on "Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month" I've read today Biker Nation's position that "Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month" again skews the focus from what should be our main issue, and that the singular focus should be reflected in singular semantics, to wit, simply "Motorcycle Awareness Month." And, of course, Biker Nation is right. And that is why Willie Sutton didn't spend his career robbing liquor stores.

If we are only going to have one month in which our policy makers are hopefully somewhat more receptive doing something productive to enhance our riding safety, then lets indeed focus on making auto drivers more aware of motorcycles.

Unfortunately, when we broaden the focus from the single issue of motorcycle awareness we open it up for state legislators and governors in many states, including at the urging of NHTSA, to redefine the problem and "solutions" in terms of what bikers wear or what education we should receive to anticipate and guard against the idiotic antics of ignorant auto drivers. One needs to look no further than Governor Bush's 2004 announcement of "Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month" in Florida, discussed in previous postings, to see how the phrasing can be turned on its head. On Biker Nation they point out the same with regard to our biker Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in his 2006 announcement also focuses principally on what bikers wear and motorcyclist education, paying lip service only to the need for other motorists to appreciate our vulnerability.

We at M-A-D-D and I think most of us at Bruce's Biker Forum attempted to seize Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month as an opportunity to raise our motorcycle awareness issues even in the face of NHTSA's and many state governors and state policy makers efforts to dilute them. State pronouncements package motorcycle safety as a barrage of secondary or trivial issues so that the problem of auto driver inattention and the importance of encouraging motorcycle awareness often takes the back seat in their statement of policies and proposals for motorcycle safety programs. And so the point that Biker Nation makes that May should be renamed simply "Motorcycle Awareness Month" is not just semantic, it is substantive.

We know that 2/3 of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents are caused solely as the result of auto driver inattention and negligence. Given my preliminary research into the subject of inattentional blindness, unfortunately I'm not so sure that even taking a month to focus the public on motorcycle awareness will be sufficient to alter these statistics much. My tentative conclusion is that it will require an auto driver reeducation including to provide auto drivers specific driving tasks to perform when a motorcycle appears in the visual field. I refer to this as "motorcycle accident avoidance strategies," which I suggest can be most effectively taught and learned in the context of mandatory auto driver education.

Specifically to alter auto driver inattention, a specific task could be anything, but as an example I've suggested informing motorists that it is more difficult to gauge the speed of a motorcycle and so they must stop to gauge the speed of an oncoming motorcycle before entering an intersection or turning left at an intersection. You see, motorists are already "aware" that motorcycles exist, and indeed I think auto drivers are commonly aware that motorcyclists are vulnerable to injury in accidents, but still auto drivers commonly claim that they don't "see" the motorcycle, despite that it is readily apparent in the driver's field of vision. Providing a "task" for the auto driver to perform -- any task -- but a task which he must consciously engage in when a motorcycle is in his field of vision is what I think may be needed to effectively overcome auto driver inattentional blindness.

Inattentional blindness is a complex phenomenon which unfortunately, at least as I have come to think about it, isn't as simple to cure as just by telling motorists to be more aware of motorcycles. One aspect of inattentional blindness, however, is "relevance" and I think it is possible that the penalty discussion on this site might also provide some tools for enhancing the "relevance" of motorcycles in the heads of auto drivers. But what we have seen so far has been mainly general legislation providing penalties for any injury caused to anyone in any kind of accident, and I just don't think that this type of general legislation is going to have any effect at all to raise the consciousness of auto drivers specifically to attend to motorcycles. Yeah, maybe a few will put together that they are more likely to injure a biker and therefore more likely to face the penalty if they cause an accident with a motorcyclist, but I think it will be the rare auto driver hearing of the general law who will put this two and two together.

But I have been educated by the postings on this site, and indeed I've contributed to updating the M-A-D-D mission to include a position on penalty legislation. But I just can't and won't sign on to something which I think is going to be ineffective. I think that to be effective specifically in raising the "relevance" of motorcycles in the minds of auto drivers, ideally the penalty should be phrased specifically as motorcyclist injury penalty legislation. Now, some have argued that motorcyclist injury specific legislation is not politically achievable, and they may be right. But once we vary from the ideal we are compromising our goal of efficacy, and if we so abandon our mission to obtain effective change, and accept the ineffective, what we do is accomplish nothing for our safety, and worse, we invite the scenario in which NHTSA or state statisticians will come along and draw the foregone conclusion that such penalty legislation is useless - making it harder for advocates for effective measures to obtain effective penalty legislation.

But, if the others of the posters are right, and they may very well be right, that motorcycle specific penalty legislation is politically unachievable, then perhaps the back up position we should take is to accept general injury penalty legislation, but with a well funded informational campaign which focuses specifically on the vulnerability of motorcyclists to be injured in accidents, perhaps TV spots or billboards with a motorcyclist being carted off in an ambulance and the auto driver being carted off to jail. That might suffice to help motorist put the two and two together.

I continue to think that the objective of overcoming inattentional blindness and the other categories of auto driver negligence deriving from auto driver ignorance of motorcycle safety issues can be most effectively accomplished by mandatory auto driver education on the motorcycle accident avoidance strategies which they need to employ for our safety.

So yeah, Right on, Biker Nation for its efforts to refocus our efforts next May on the singular issue of "Motorcycle Awareness," and let us try our best next year to prevent NHTSA, our state governors and legislators from diluting or redirecting the focus of Our Month. And thank you fellow posters for helping to get me thinking about the potential utility of penalty legislation

"M-A-D-D Ray" Henke