High quality, cost effective initial rider training is probably the most important measure for improving motorcycle safety. Every European citizen who wants to start riding a motorcycle should have easy access to high quality, cost effective initial rider training.

Initial rider training must teach the skills, knowledge and attitude needed to survive on the road, not just the skills needed to pass a licence test. Initial rider training should arrive from the EU/FEMA/FIM/ACEM Initial Rider Training Programme and be described in detail an agreed, national curriculum for category A
Instructors should ideally be practising riders and no one should be allowed to offer training for money without having participated in an officially recognised instructor’s training programme arriving from the agreed, national curriculum for category A.

The licence test
The licence test should not expose candidates to peculiar exercises with little relevance to real-life safe riding, the consequence being that perfectly competent candidates may fail the test, while questionable candidates, who have “learned the tricks”, may pass. The licence test is a quality assurance of the candidate’s competence, meaning the minimum skills, knowledge and attitude needed to safely operate a motorcycle on public roads, and it is of great importance that the licence test is designed to do exactly that. As with instructors, examiners should ideally be practising riders and no one should be allowed to work as an examiner without having participated in an officially recognised examiner’s training programme arriving from the agreed, national curriculum for category A.

‘Content is King’
If training and testing becomes overly complicated and overly expensive, there is a real risk that citizens will choose to ride without licence, which is both illegal and extremely dangerous. The present EU 3rd Driving Licence Directive focuses only on the regulatory framework, not even considering the content of training, only briefly commenting on the content of testing, and doing that ignoring the very purpose of training and testing. Provided having had access to high quality, cost effective training, coached by trained instructors, and having passed a properly designed test, supervised by trained examiners, it is not more dangerous to ride a motorcycle when being 18 years old than driving a car when being 18 years old. And when having properly learned to safely operate a motorcycle on public roads it is not more dangerous to ride a motorcycle with 148bhp than a motorcycle with 48bhp.

Pan-European access
The present regulatory framework’s positive effects on motorcycle safety is undocumented and at the best questionable. Thus, FEMA wants to reverse today’s unnecessary strict and complicated framework for motorcycle licensing and instead introduce Pan-European access to high quality, cost effective rider training and a licence test ensuring that the novice rider has the skills, knowledge and attitude needed to safely operate a motorcycle on public roads.