Lesson Six
Modifying Rider Behavior
Rider performance refers to the rider’s perceptual and motor skills – what the rider can do. Rider behavior refers to what, in fact, the rider does. The distinction between performance and behavior is one of the most central concepts in traffic safety. Riders will choose their own level of task difficulty such as driving faster, passing in heavier traffic, or cutting inside other vehicles. Each rider will select his own level of risk taking.
Most motorcycle riders believe they are better than other riders. Thai riders, especially young male riders, have a systematic bias in favor of thinking that their personal risk is lower that that of others and experience to the contrary does not often change this view. This tendency of riders to think they are safer than others tends to move driver behavior in the direction of less prudent safety margins.
This set of beliefs suggests two points to be considered by individual riders:
The majority of other motorcyclists you encounter consider themselves to be better than most other riders
2. It is possible that your own self-evaluation of riding skills and safety may be biased in the same direction as that of other cyclists.
In order to encourage motorcycle riders to modify their behavior we should look at various personality factors that play a central role in accident involvement:
1. “We ride as we live” – If your personal life is marked by caution, tolerance, foresight and consideration for others, then you will ride in the same manner. If your personal life is devoid of these desirable characteristics then your riding will be characterized by aggressiveness, arrogance, and risk taking; consequently you will most likely have a higher accident rate than your more stable companion.
2. Maturity and intelligence – When compared with a safe rider the accident prone rider is less mature, less intellectual in his tastes and interests (not necessarily less intelligent), has a lower aspiration level, expresses a poorer attitude toward the law and is not socially well-adjusted.
3. Disregard for the law – The good motorcyclist not only follows the traffic law he internalizes the control over his own behavior so that the laws need not be enforced by police or others. The total acceptance of personal responsibility for the way we ride is one of the most important lessons for every rider to learn.
4. Pleasure and thrill seeking – Extra motives that affect riding safety are:
a. Competitiveness
b. Sense of power and control
c. Pursuit of sensual pleasure for its own sake
Such motives are likely to play an important role in the higher crash rates of young male drivers, who may want to use their motorcycle to show-off, attract young girls, to provide excitement and display competitive prowess.
5. Suicide – Suicide on a motorcycle provides the most undiscoverable and honorable method of self destruction. There is no estimate of the percentage of motorcycle accidents in Thailand which can be attributed to suicide, but these statistics would be of considerable interest.
6. Speed choice and crash risk – Among the factors contributing to speed choice is an underestimation of the probability that the rider will be killed. Speed is often desired for its own sake for the sensuous pleasure rather than for utilitarian motives such as saving time. Still chosen speed has a large influence on the risk of a crash, injury, or death.
One of the most important traits of Thai motorcycle riders is that the culture emphasizes the importance of consideration for others. The most immediate expression of this trait would be the desire to take steps to reduce the chances that he or she will kill or permanently injure some innocent bystander in a crash. This is an area where the young cyclist can directly control events. An appeal should be made to the kindness of the rider rather than appealing to the more traditional and selfish motive of self-preservation.
It will be an uphill battle to persuade young cyclists that they should not admire or emulate other young people who use motorcycles to risk their own lives in the pursuit of pleasure and defiance of authority. Emphasis on why people ride the way they do and the potential consequences of such behavior might lead to safer riding. As was pointed out earlier, the problem of motorcycle accidents is much more one of riders doing things that they know they ought not to do, than of riders not knowing what to do.
Risk Life-style
Among young motorcycle riders there is undoubtedly a sub group of drivers who deliberately take risks. As a consequence they are over involved in both traffic violations and accidents. Their risky behavior is not just confined to roadway use but characterizes their life-style as a whole. They are more likely to engage in drug use, heavy drinking and petty crime. These expressions of poor socialization and risk seeking may well be the result of both personality and environmental factors.
The term risk covers both subjective risk (what the rider perceives the risk to be and objective risk (the actual risk as measured using data.)
Motorcyclists are more vulnerable because of the nature of motorcycle riding and the conditions under which they ride. The vehicle offers less protection in the event of a collision. They are more likely to ride with friends, children and others as passengers.
Motorcyclists are subject to peer pressure. Evidence suggests that for some young riders high-risk riding, which they see as a demonstration of superior control skills, is associated with social status and is reinforced by peer influences. This creates an opportunity for others in the group to have either positive or negative influence on the rider.
Motorcyclists are generally poor at identifying distant hazards, see less risk in various riding scenarios, and are more likely to be in situations where they may come into conflict with other riders and drivers. They tend do accept shorter headway and narrower gaps when entering traffic.
Learning to ride is in part about learning how to relate to other people on the road. But beyond this basic social learning there is the further dimension of communication, knowing what, how and when to communicate to other road users and how to interpret the messages being transmitted by them. Communication modes include indicator lights, brake lights, head-lamp flashes, sounding the horn, and making eye contact or waving. More subtly they include the ‘posture’ of other vehicles, whether nosing out from a parking space or in terms of its trajectory when moving. The good rider needs to learn to interpret these cues appropriately, as well as how to employ them himself.
Learning to ride a motorcycle does not start with a blank canvas: it is situated in a life history of the individual in which many relevant elements have already been assimilated. Most riders have varying degrees of direct exposure to traffic as pedestrians or passengers in cars or motorcycles. Some gain experience from viewing fictional movies. Such knowledge is important for the development of safe riding because it allows the rider to rule out certain contingencies as improbably or impossible – for example: “This roadway looks greasy, if I brake hard on it I may lose adhesion and directional control.”
Conclusion
Rider error is the most prominent cause factor in motorcycle accidents in Thailand. Whether the accidents are single vehicle crashes involving only the motorcycle or multiple vehicle accidents, rider error is more likely to be the primary contributing factor. There is no way to address this problem without communicating some information directly to the riders themselves. Because so many motorcyclists begin riding at a very young age in Thailand (sometimes by the age of 13) and because so many do not continue schooling beyond high school, rider education is needed.
Many accident involved riders are unaware of the laws they are violating and they do not understand that they are engaged in some unsafe action that will lead to an accident. The need for basic safety information is clear. There are known defensive driving practices for motorcyclists as there are for passenger car and truck drivers. The purpose of this course is to present these practices, strategies, and tactics to motorcyclists who are already able to operate a motorcycle, but need to operate it with lower risk.
This course is composed of five lessons to deliver this message:
Lesson 1 Risk Awareness
Lesson 2 Risk Management
Lesson 3 Getting Ready to Ride
Lesson 4 Riding Your Motorcycle
Lesson 5 Reducing Your Risk
Lesson 6 Modifying Rider Behavior
The course emphasizes the high risk of impaired riding. Alcohol involved motorcycle riding is a major target for law enforcement action. No other single factor causes so many accidents or affects the accident characteristics in Thailand.
Education can make a contribution mainly by influencing attitudes and by imparting knowledge that will not be acquired by direct experience. Most of the task of riding a motorcycle is learned by direct feedback from the task itself, safety must be imparted by less direct means because direct feedback is far too costly in terms of lives.
Contact Safe Driver Education for more information on Motorcycle Safety
Telephone +662 961-0002