Issued 25th January 2007   Motorcycle-Friendly Guardrails: One Step Further FEMA is granted the liaison status with CEN/TC 226

On January 24th, the "Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations" (FEMA) was granted the liaison status with the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) Technical Committee (TC) 226 "Road equipment" as representative of motorcycle riders.

Because of experience based on numerous accidents reported by its members (where guardrails did cause more severe injuries to the rider), FEMA is in a position to contribute to achieving the best possible performance requirements for standards in this field. FEMA will particularly follow the work of WG 1 “Crash barriers, safety fences, guard rails and bridge parapets”.

Concurrent with its access CEN standardization working group, FEMA is being involved in APROSYS - an Integrated European research project on advanced protection systems – in developing a new test procedure for motorcyclist-road-infrastructure interaction. Guidelines to design motorcyclist friendly roadside infrastructure should be one of the expected results of the sub-group dedicated to motorcycle safety.

Finally, FEMA General Secretary was invited to witness the last compulsory crash test of HIASA motorcycle-friendly guardrail device, one of the few existing alternative to current ordinary guardrails on the European market. The crash test took place last week at the Research Institute CIDAUT, in Valladolid , Spain , and, though still very impressive, the crash of the dummy against the device showed, according to experts, its efficiency.

FEMA will now work on convincing CEN members and the European Commission to define guardrails which will, at last, take motorcyclists into account either by modifying the current EN1317 standard or by creating a brand new European standard, such as the Spanish one, for devices to be added to the existing guardrails.

END

Notes

1. CEN, the European Committee for Standardisation, was founded in 1961 by the national standards bodies in the European Economic Community (EEC) and EFTA countries.
   
   Today, CEN is contributing to the objectives of the European Union and European Economic Area with voluntary technical standards which promote free trade, the safety of workers and consumers, interoperability of networks, environmental protection, exploitation of research and development programmes, and public procurement.
   
   On behalf of governments, the European Commission or EFTA Secretariat may request the European Standards organisations to develop standards in support of their policies by issuing formal 'mandates'.
   
   More information on www.cen.eu
    

2. APROSYS objectives regarding motorcycles versus infrastructure are:
   
   • To evaluate different road infrastructure systems or existing obstacles in the road that could be potentially dangerous to motorcyclists.
   • To develop a proposal of test procedures to evaluate road infrastructure.
   • To elaborate a concept design of a new protective system (guardrail) valid for motorcyclists.
   
   More information on the motorcycle part of the research project at www.aprosys.com
    

3. HIASA Here
    

4. FEMA currently represents 19 European countries (23 national associations) about 330,000 individuals.

FEMA - Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations
Rue des Champs 62, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 736 9047 / Fax: +32 (0)2 736 9401
www.fema.ridersrights.org