Dear Reader.
The following letter to Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu was on Motorcycling Australia letterhead. It has been sent to media. It is published here with permission from the Manager of the Riders' Division, Rob Smith. It is supported by the major rider representative groups in Victoria.
The letter protests the Transport Accident Commission's anti-motorcycle campaigns and calls for the legislation that set up the TAC to be reviewed and changed so that TAC bureaucrats won't be allowed to discriminate against motorcycle & scooter riders again and our money can be spent on road safety initiatives that actually work.
TAC sponsoring ambulances instead of TV shows like "Bikie Wars" or reducing premiums for safe drivers and riders would be a good start. Real research and better rehab facilities and methods would help.
TAC should get out of showbiz.
If you support the MA Letter please email the Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu MP and Daniel Andrews MP and let them know.
Damien Codognotto OAM
Spokesman
Independent Riders' Group
Melbourne
Tel: 03 9846 8621
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Office of the Premier
1
Treasury Place
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia, 3002
Dear Premier Baillieu
TAC
‘Reconstruction’ campaign
Sir, as you are doubtless aware, in recent
weeks the TAC has been running an advertisement aimed at motorcycle riders.
This ad has caused considerable angst amongst riders as it represents the most
offensive in a long line of ads that contain arguably disingenuous
representations of facts and figures; as well as inaccurate, prejudicial and
dangerous stereotypes. Coupled with an institutionalised disregard for
consultation between TAC, rider representatives and riding safety experts, the
recent ad ‘reconstruction’ has led to a total loss of faith by riders in the
integrity of the TAC and by association, Victoria Police. Any future campaigns
will be tainted by this ad for years to come. Whatever good will there may have
been, has now been lost and will take years to rebuild.
How
are the ads disingenuous?
In the first instance, despite assertions
that the ads to date are aimed at riders with a view to changing behaviour, it
would appear that the real aim is to terrify and dissuade prospective riders
through the graphic and insensitive presentation of the horror associated with
being a vulnerable road user. If the aim was truly to improve rider safety,
then there would be an even handed approach to the campaigns that deals not
just with the usual dogma of speed and irresponsible riding on the part of
riders, but also the impact on riders’ safety by bad driving. The ‘Put yourself
in their shoes’ campaign showed that the TAC are in fact capable of such
things, but it would appear that the long term vision carried a different
agenda.
Over the past two years we have seen a
succession of ads following the now tired but traditional format of shock,
shock and more gore accompanied by gut wrenching sound effects. We have been
shown images of riders with injuries that are not representative of the
injuries normally sustained in crashes, we have been shown crashes that verge
on the laughably implausible and we have been subjected to selective use of
statistics coupled with some very dubious pseudo-science. Some of the
statistics have even been described in the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into
motorcycle safety by renowned research organisations as ‘disingenuous’.
To make matters worse, the TAC actively
seeks to promote the abdication of responsibility for drivers when it comes to
being responsible for riders’ safety. Examples are readily available and one
particularly ugly example can be found in the recent campaign that stabbed a
finger in the chest of riders with the catch phrase "It's up to you to
reduce the risks." No hint of ambiguity about drivers sharing
responsibility in risk reduction there. I am sure you will agree that road safety is the shared responsibility of
all road users and for any road safety organisation, and for the TAC to promote
such a one sided and prejudicial philosophy is contrary to the greater good.
TV ads and billboards are obvious to all,
but the loudly denied prejudice permeates throughout the TAC’s many forms of
media. Following a similar vein and perhaps more insidiously, the following
example can be found on the TAC Spokes website
Road Safety Links
About the crash scenario
In this crash scenario, was the driver at fault?
A driver facing a stop sign control under the Road Rules must
give way to all vehicles travelling along or turning from the intersecting
carriageway. However there is a case law that states, "You cannot give way
to something you cannot see”. In this ad scenario, the driver looked but the
motorcyclist was out of the field of view of the driver because of his 68km/h
travel speed.
If a vehicle is found to have been speeding in this
circumstance, fault is attributed more to the speeding vehicle rather than the
vehicle facing the stop or give way sign.
Discounting the irony of a ‘no fault’
organisation delving into the realms of blame and the suspect claim regarding
field of view, the motorcycle rider shown in the ‘Reconstruction’ ad is
speeding by 8Kph, an offence that carries a demerit point total of one.
According to the Road Regulations, the total demerit points that could be
issued to the car driver disobeying the Stop sign and failing to give way is
three.
Despite the fact that the law clearly regards
one act as being more heinous than the other and penalises accordingly, the TAC
through the inclusion of the case law example implies that somehow the act of
failing to give way is less irresponsible - and indeed tacitly forgivable, than
exceeding the speed limit by a small amount. In order to support its position
they then cite the case law in order to provide the driver with the following
‘get out of jail free’ card of ‘You cannot give way to something you cannot
see”. Handy in this case when you are the driver and not the rider - and
equally as handy when the rider is not speeding at all and through inattention
a driver pulls into the path of a rider and kills him or her.
The case in question is Moulton v Williams
and Moulton v Baxter
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VicRp/1969/64.html
and concerns a collision that occurred in 1967 at a residential intersection in
Geelong at night. In this case, two vehicles pulled into the path of a Police
car from two separate carriageways in the same road. As vehicle A blocked the
view of vehicle B by being alongside and the view of the Police car was
obscured by an iron fence until the last moment, the circumstances were
relatively unique. Following advice from legal sources it is now known that
since that time, the case law has never been used as a precedent.
This absolution of drivers is an insult to
all those who have lost loved ones through the negligence of a driver and is a
gross irresponsibility that should not be tolerated from a government sanctioned organisation allegedly
seeking to improve road safety through the promotion of shared responsibility.
How
do these ads vilify and marginalise riders?
Vilify
– from the Latin “to hold cheap”
No person should be held lower in
estimation or importance for race, colour, religion or gender. Nor should they
be vilified for their choice of transport. Yet it would seem that if the cause
is road safety, then those championing that cause are able to dispense with
decency and integrity and become as discriminatory as they see fit. One only
has to compare the ads produced showing other road users groups to those
depicting riders, in order to see that there is an unrelenting theme throughout
the TAC ads dealing with motorcyclists that presents a consistently negative
stereotype.
Is it any wonder that the TAC ads fail so
miserably at street level, despite the carefully engineered attempts at
self-validation through the use of cleverly constructed questionnaires and
focus groups? Is it any wonder that riders feel so marginalised and oppressed
on all sides when they are misrepresented so consistently by the people who
should be striving to bring them into the road safety fold by encouraging
tolerance and responsibility?
The result of these campaigns is that
drivers now behave far more aggressively towards riders than they have ever
before. Anecdotally more riders report acts of aggression on a daily basis from
drivers who deliberately swerve at them, cut them off, tailgate and abuse them
than ever before. Many riders feel that rather than making their lives safer,
the TAC has made the legitimate use of a motorcycle on Victoria’s roads more
dangerous and consequently the TAC and those involved in this propaganda have
blood on their hands.
Why
is this so?
Through the use of negative stereotyping by
presenting motorcyclists as universally irresponsible and in all likelihood to
be speeding at all times, the TAC is guilty of cultivating prejudice on the
part of jurors in appeals and of decision makers generally, when it comes to
receiving a fair hearing to determine fault or compensation. This is
unacceptable and goes beyond the remit of the TAC act.
It is true to say that the TAC is seen by
motorcyclists as completely unaccountable and that the organisation has a
government sanctioned mandate to ride roughshod over any road user group, so
long as the banner of road safety is waved vigorously enough. No organisation
should be unaccountable to the public it serves and while there is always the
option of reporting complaints to the Advertising Standards Board, the process
is seen as long and unwieldy by the general public. Yet this is the path that
must be taken. It is the feeling of riders throughout Australia and of the
parties shown below that we can no longer stand silent in the face of the
iniquity that emerges when public servants start to feel that the public is
there to serve them.
We have therefore lodged a complaint
against the TAC to the Advertising Standards Board. In addition a copy of this
letter has been sent to the Victorian Premier.
Further,
we the undersigned call upon the TAC to:
• Discontinue
and permanently remove the current ‘Reconstruction advertisement and associated
material.
• Discontinue the
current one dimensional ‘Shock and Gore’ approach to road safety campaigns.
In addition we call upon the Victorian
Government to:
• To initiate a
Parliamentary Inquiry to review the scope and administration of the Transport
Accident Act 1986.
• As part of the
inquiry, also examine the equity of compensation paid to motorcyclists compared
to drivers involved in identical cases.
• Establish
regulations that govern the content and ethics of Road Safety campaigns in
order to prevent misrepresentation or vilification of any road user group.
• Instruct the TAC to
consult in a meaningful and constructive way with rider representative groups
on the creation and content of future motorcycle safety campaigns.
• Establish an
independent TAC watchdog committee comprising ministerially appointed
representatives from all road user groups.
Yours sincerely
Rob Smith
Manager – Australian Riders’ Division -
(VMAG member)
Motorcycling Australia
This letter has been endorsed by:
·
Peter Baulch – Chairman Victorian
Motorcycle Council
·
Damien Codognotto OAM – President, Independent Rider Group
·
Grant Delahoy - 2012 President of the
MRA(Vic)
·
Tony Ellis - Victorian representative
on the Ulysses Road Safety Committee (VMAG
member)
