Juan Manuel Reyes, the president of the Spanish motorcyclists’ association ANM – a member of FEMA – held a meeting with Mr. Álvaro Navareño, Technical Director of the General Directorate of Highways and his team. In this meeting, work was done on improving the criteria for installing Motorcycle Protection Systems on Metal Safety Barriers, popularly known as ‘guardrails’.

Currently, these installation criteria from 2014 are regulated at the state level and which, although it was a great advance at the time, from the point of view of the ANM, are excessively modest, since the criteria only include the recommendation to install Motorcycle Protection Systems in curved sections and when limited speed or geometry conditions are met.

For the ANM, the only legally valid criterion to equalize the rights of motorcyclists with those of car drivers would be that which requires the installation of a Motorcycle Protection Systems in all guardrails of the country. But, understanding the existing budgetary limitations, there is the possibility of introducing important and economically acceptable improvements in the short and medium term that allow a considerable expansion of the number of barriers with Motorcycle Protection Systems.

This is the specific proposal made by ANM:

• Eliminate the concept of ‘recommendation’ for installation so that it becomes ‘obligation’ for Motorcycle Protection Systems installation.
• Improve current geometric criteria:
  • Do not limit the installation of Motorcycle Protection Systems by a criterion of traffic speed on curves; they should be installed on all types of curves regardless of their specific or relative speed.
  • Improve the curve radius criterion based on which the installation of Motorcycle Protection Systems is necessary.
• Introduce a new criterion, additional to the previous ones, based on the potential danger of the road for motorists and cyclists:
  • Roads with high motorist accident rates.
  • Roads with a high rate of incidents affecting motorists.
  • Roads with medium and high intensity of use, by motorcyclist users.

This meeting is a follow-up on the meeting held on April 8 with Mr. Juan Pedro Fernández, Director of Highways of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility. Joint work on the reform will continue over the coming months in order to improve the safety of motorcyclists in terms of containment systems on the roads under the Ministry’s responsibility.

Source: ANM

Top photograph by Wim Taal

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