This is not the sort of thing I’d ever expect to see in England. Officials in Austria have developed a special road marking system to help motorcyclists take corners better.
The system relies on a natural instinct of motorcyclists to encourage them to take corners a little wider and, more importantly, avoid getting too close to oncoming traffic. Basically, Austrian officials have painted a bunch of circles on the road, creating what the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Associations (FEMA) describes as “a string of pearls” along the center line.
These road markings provide a visual reference of where a motorcyclist should be as they move through a corner, but also manage to promote adherence by the simple fact that they are, you know, road markings.
“Motorcyclists generally avoid riding on road markings , even if they are sufficiently grippy and non-slip,” a FEMA media release points out.
Keeping riders on their side of the road
The idea had come about because the majority of motorcycle accidents in Austria take place in bends. Officials there found that blame for a large number of these accidents could be chalked down to riders choosing the wrong line.
“The cause of many motorcycle accidents is an incorrectly chosen cornering line,” explains FEMA. “If the upper body extends too far… into the oncoming lane, it is often no longer possible to swerve without causing an accident when oncoming traffic suddenly appears.”
You’ve probably seen this, or maybe even been guilty of it yourself: motorcyclists hugging the center line through a corner, so their head sticks out right into the space where a truck’s front grill would be if it happened to be on the other end of said corner.
I’ve done a number of BikeSafe and Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) courses, and a foundational part of their riding style involves moving out to the edge of corners to avoid exactly this scenario.
But it’s kind of understandable why we do this. When you’re tipped over, leaning into a curve, it’s difficult to know/see/sense exactly where the outside edge of that curve is. It’s not in your immediate peripheral vision; the bike’s in the way. And if you’re looking where you want to go, you’re not going to be looking at that outer edge.
A simple solution
Accepting this, officials at Austria’s Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit (KFV), which Google translates to “Board of Trustees for Road Safety,” looked to riders’ aversion to road markings for assistance. They painted circles onto the road at 19 particularly dangerous corners in the mountains of the Tyrol region, thereby encouraging motorcyclists to ride further from the center. The end results were dramatic.
“The innovative optical support brought about an 80-percent reduction in the number of motorcycle accidents in the test curves,” according to FEMA.
So, in summary: they put some extra paint on the road ─ well, actually, “3M Stamark 380 film material,” according to FEMA, which has a “particularly high coefficient of friction and… can be driven on immediately after the film has been applied” ─ and it reduced accidents by 80 percent. That is so clever and so simple. And it is, as I say, the sort of thing that would never be done in England.
Partially that’s because the nation’s investment in roads is abysmal. But also because its road thinking is entirely car-focused. And the approach to safety is always either more signage or lower speed limits. The kind of outside-the-box thinking demonstrated by the Austrians simply isn’t encouraged or nurtured.
True, it’s at risk of being run by a far-right party, but Austria sounds like a sensible place to ride a motorcycle.
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