Plans to make EVERY road user safer for motorcyclists

Big Brother isn’t just watching you, it’s making every new car, van and lorry have a speed limiter fitted to protect ‘vulnerable’ road users, too!

It’s some of the best news that bikers could have got and it’ll mean that the roads are at least a bit more safe for people that ride on two wheels.

In a decision by European bosses, every new vehicle other than motorcycles will have to come with a raft of safety features fitted as STANDARD at the time of manufacture.

European rule makers have now voted in favour of the compulsory use of Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) and other safety technologies across a range of road vehicles in a move designed to make roads safer for vulnerable road users like motorcyclists.

The latest round of big brother legislation has been given the green light from MEPs for the introduction of a range of new vehicle safety systems which will, by law, have to be fitted in all new cars, vans, buses and lorries by 2022.

The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) says that by introducing such technologies as ISA, Assisted Emergency Braking and Emergency Lane Keeping into every vehicle on the road, speed-related incidents will be reduced by up to 20%.

The safety systems also include crash testing requirements and the installation of black box-type Event Data Recorders, which record vehicle information in the moments leading up to a collision.

Members of the European Parliament are urging the legislation to come into effect sooner rather than later, to enable new vehicles to start being fitted with the systems.

The European Commission proposed the update to the EU’s General Safety Regulation for motor vehicles in May 2018, ahead of the introduction of permanent speed cameras on smart motorways across the UK. However, the UK’s planned withdrawal from the European Union on March 29 raises questions about how, or if, this new safety legislation will apply to UK motorists.

According to a survey carried out by road safety charity Brake and insurance company Direct Line, nine out of ten drivers want safety standards to remain at least as high as the rest of the EU, post-Brexit. The ETSC says 2,100 lives could be saved yearly across Europe if average speeds dropped by 1km/h on all EU roads, with around 25,000 fatalities spared within 15 years of the legislation coming into force.