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Motorcyclist Advisory Council (MAC-FHWA)

Motorcylist Advisory Council Meeting

Washington, D.C. - 10/24/2006 Transcript

Designation/Association	Last Name	First Name	City	State	Gender
Moderator/Westat	Bents	Fran	Rockville	MD	F
#1: V-P, AMA AMA	Moreland Maher-substitute	Ed Sean	Washington Washington	DC DC	M M
#2: V-P, MRF	Hennie	Jeff	Washington	DC	M
#3: Chairman, Nat'l. Assn. of State MSA	Kiphart (Absent)	Ken	Carson City	NV	M
#4: State Coord. ABATE of SD	Killion	Darrel	Madison	SD	M
#5: State Exec. Dir. ABATE of OH, Inc.	Zimmer	Steven	Columbus	OH	M
#6: Pres./CEO Kleinfelder, Inc.	Salontai	Gerald	San Diego	CA	M
#7: Exec. V-P Potters Industries	McClune	Robert	Valley Forge	PA	M
#8: Sr. V-P / Gov. Rel. - MSF	Van Kleeck	Kathy	Arlington	VA	F
#9: Mgr.,Texas DOT	Bloschock	Mark	Austin	TX	M
#10: Chief Eng./Dep. Dir. AL DOT	Vaughn	Donald	Montgomery	AL	M
Research Asst. / Westat	Boyd	Shelley	Rockville	MD	F
Notetaker: Westat	Walker	Duane	Rockville	MD	M

Ms. Bents: Good morning the Secretary is on her way, so I would like to trip over Shelley (laughter). I'd like to get us oriented as to what we're going to do today. I'm Fran Bents, I'm with Westat and I'm the meeting facilitator so you'll be hearing a lot from me today. In a few minutes, when the Secretary arrives, I will ask each of you to just introduce yourselves so that she'll know who is here and after that we will have remarks from the Secretary. We also have Richard Capka, the Administrator of Federal Highway and Jeff Lindley, the Associate Administrator for Safety here with us this morning. Following their remarks then we will get into an overview of Federal Highway and we will get to the business at hand. I'll be asking each of you what your particular area of interest may be; I'll go over the meeting format and some of the ground rules that we'd like to follow today and then we'll start talking about issues and I'll be asking you to help me establish priorities for the issues that we will be discussing today. We'll work through those issues and come up with some concerns and recommendations. We will have time for public comment at the end of the day; we'll have a summary and we all get to go home. So, please take your seats. I think I warned you previously but there will be nothing served here today, but we will have a morning break and an afternoon break and, of course, stop for lunch. There is a little café right around the corner, so if you are in need of stimulants of some kind, I will understand. You can run down the hall and get something.

Mr. Halladay: I think I've had a chance to meet most of you but let me introduce myself, Mike Halladay, with the Federal Highway Administration. We've engaged Fran and her firm to help pull together the meeting. I'm sure you were having good conversations this morning. We didn't mean to stop things too soon but the Secretary is going to be on a tight schedule, so we wanted to make sure you folks had a chance to say who you are. We're looking forward to a good day.

Ms. Bents: Just to let you know, we are audio recording the meeting and this is because we will be preparing a transcript of the entire meeting. I will ask you as we get into the discussions, to the extent that you can remember and I can remember to prompt you, to please identify yourself as you make your remarks. I'm going to go over here and turn off my cell phone and I would appreciate it if the rest of you would do the same, or set them to vibrate.

Ms. Bents: O.K., I think we'll hear now from Jeff Lindley who is Associate Administrator for Safety with the Federal Highway Administration. He will make the appropriate introductions this morning. Mr. Lindley.

Mr. Lindley: Thank you, Fran. Good morning everybody.

Audience: Good morning.

Mr. Lindley: On behalf of the FHWA Office of Safety, which I am privileged to lead, I want to welcome all of you to this first meeting of the Motorcyclist Advisory Council. I met a couple of folks, my staff in the room. You'll meet a couple more throughout the day but we're really looking forward to working with all of you, on hearing your thoughts and recommendations about motorcycle safety. There's really nothing that substitutes for stakeholder input directly from the stakeholders. So we're looking forward to hearing from all of you throughout the day and as the Council continues to do its work.

I have the luxury, I guess, the privilege really, of worrying about highway safety on a full-time basis. It's all I worry about these days and I'm pretty passionate about that. The folks that you will meet, that will welcome you next, have other things to worry about but I don't think you'll find that either of them is any less passionate about highway safety. They wanted to come here this morning and share a few thoughts, some words of welcome for you before you start your work as an advisory council. Rick Capka was sworn in as the sixteenth Federal Highway Administrator in May of 2006. He actually succeeded Mary Peters as Federal Highway Administrator. Rick came to FHWA in August of 2002 as Deputy Administrator after a twenty-nine year career with the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers and a few years with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority as CEO and Executive Director. Rick is going to give a few words of welcome and introduce Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters. Rick.

Rick Capka: Thanks, Jeff and again welcome to all of you. I really do appreciate the fact that you've volunteered your time and it's fairly valuable, and we really appreciate that, for something that's extremely important which is motorcycle safety. As we have looked at our priorities in federal highways, without equivocating, safety is our number one priority. Forty three thousand Americans are killed every year on the roads, it's unacceptable. We are just delighted that you all have elected to take some of your time and devote it to a very important topic. But I'm not here to talk about what you're going to be doing today, this is your inaugural meeting and Jeff and the Team are going to be working with you to get things organized and get everybody fully engaged. What I am here to do is to introduce your keynote speaker this morning. And it's somebody that we don't even need to introduce to you. Mary, you're probably one of the most prominent people in transportation, in the transportation community, for quite some time. Twenty years in the transportation business, she has been the Director of the Arizona Department of Transportation, and my predecessor. She brought me into transportation, by the way, and I was delighted that she took a vote of confidence in me and I was her deputy for three years. She is very well known to the motorcycle community. She's an avid motorcyclist. I don't know if that's your helmet.

Mary Peters: It was.

Rick Capka: It was, O.K. Her motorcycle, I believe, is going to be joining you here pretty soon. So the Harley Fat Boy is going to be part of the family here in Washington, D.C. We were just delighted, and I think I speak for everybody in Transportation, when President Bush announced, not much more than six weeks ago, that Mary Peters was his nominee to be Secretary of Transportation. Delighted and it wasn't surprising to any of us that within record time, in a very busy Senate schedule during the month of September, a lot of things get done before they went on recess, that Mary was confirmed before the Senate recessed for the election time frame. Probably something that was almost unprecedented, considering the various challenges of moving very significant nominations through Congress this time. I'm delighted it happened. Secretary Peters you have the entire Transportation community behind you and it's just a delight for me, a privilege for me, to be working for Secretary Peters again and to introduce you this morning, Secretary Peters, to the Advisory Council.

(Applause)

Sec. Peters: Thank you so much and it is indeed a pleasure. I see many friends here in the room. Kathy you were there when I took the Motorcycle Safety Course here in Virginia and Don, I know, is a long-time rider. We still have to do Natches Trace sometime and Gerry, of course, as well, but welcome to all of you and thank you again, as Rick said, for your dedication and willingness to serve on this Advisory Committee. I wanted to make a couple of recommendations to you as you go forward today, but most importantly, we're here to hear your input and your responses on how we can improve motorcycle safety and, of course, your direct input is on the roadway and things we can do to make the roadway safer, so that riders are not hurt because of anything that has to do with the infrastructure.

In highway safety we generally talk about the three "e"s and I like to talk about the four "e"s and those "e"s are, of course, engineering, education, enforcement and I think the fourth one that I often add is emergency response. If we could get emergency response there quickly enough in the unfortunate event that there is a crash, then we can probably do something to save some lives or prevent further injuries. And I call them very specifically "crashes". They're not accidents, they're crashes. And they're crashes because probably there was something there that was preventable when that crash occurred. If we can examine that factor and especially, as your mandate says, look at the roadway and how the roadway is configured and designed, and if there are things that we can change there to keep those crashes from occurring, then we absolutely want to know that as well.

I also want to congratulate you because being appointed to an Advisory Committee, such as this, by the President, is very meaningful. I hope it is very meaningful to you as well. It doesn't happen every day and it's a tremendous opportunity that you have before you, working with Federal Highway and its staff, as the statute allows, to do everything you can to improve safety for the motorcycling community. You all don't need to understand the data and you probably don't need me to explain the data to you but I wanted to tell you a little bit about it.

Before I start that, I want to compliment all of you for the time you're taking to do this. We, all of us, I believe, around the table are fellow riders and I love to ride. You know, there are people out there who cannot see a golf course without wishing they were out there hitting a ball. I cannot hear a motorcycle without wishing I was on the back of that motorcycle going wherever that person is going. I hear them outside the window of my office on occasion and it just, makes me want to get out in the saddle and use that throttle. I really, really enjoy riding, and as Rick said, luring me back here to Washington was something the President was able to do because he felt we had something significant yet to accomplish in the next two years and I do as well. Safety is at the absolute top of that list. As Rick said, for Federal Highway, but for all of U.S. DOT, safety is at the top of the list. But it is a little bitter-sweet to be out here without my trusty steed; it's still in the garage in Arizona. It will be shipped out here shortly, one of them, Gerry, one. We'll keep one out here and one in Arizona so we can ride when we're back in Arizona, as well. I am looking forward to getting that motorcycle back out here, taking the opportunity to ride some more in this beautiful part of the country.

I have a tremendous opportunity on Thursday of this week. I'm going up to Wauwatosa, in Wisconsin, to the "Motherland" as we call it, where Harleys are made and get a chance to see them. The reason for my visit up there is to coincide with just what we're doing here: to talk about safety and to engage the officials at Harley-Davidson, as well as officials in other parts of our industry, in the safety issues and what can we do to improve safety. It's very important. Motorcycle ridership is just moving by incredible bounds; many, many more people are joining those of us who have been on the road for a few years, everyday. In terms of riding, 5.8 million Americans are now motorcycle riders, and I think we see a lot of them as we go out everyday, many of us. But the sad news is that fatalities have been going up for eight straight years and have been going up disproportionately to the number of riders, meaning we are seeing more and more crashes, not just as a percent of the riding population but more and more crashes overall.

It has more than doubled fatalities for motorcycles. Motorcycle fatalities have more than doubled since 1997 increasing by 115%. There were more than 4,500 fatalities just last calendar year, in 2005, and more than 85,000 motorcycle riders were injured. And I think we would all agree they are statistics we want to do something about. We have to change and we have to look at it holistically. Baby Boomers, those of us who are now proud owners of our own AARP card, membership in AARP, show a ten year increase in crashes among the 50+ group. The increase is 400% - 400% - that's my age group. I think I'm probably representative of many of the people who used to ride when I was younger, got married, had a family, had children. When we topped out at three kids that was it; we had to stop riding, at least on our individual bikes at that time because we couldn't get the kids on one bike. My husband continued to ride throughout that time and I on the back of his and then when I was here in Washington in 2001 and it was the Memorial Day weekend of 2002 that I really got the bug again as I sat and listened to all the bikers come in to town for the Rolling Thunder Rally.

I also am representative of that age group in that my bike went down last year. I had a crash as Gerry and Don and many of you know and I broke my collarbone. I brought my helmet today because I wanted you to see what saved me from a serious head injury. I'm not here to advocate or not about this, I understand it's not in your purview. But when I had to lay the bike down and clipped the front tire of my husband's which caused him to go down, as well, this helmet, I firmly believe, saved me from a serious head injury. It doesn't look that bad. I had a road rash about this big on my shoulder and I had a broken collar bone which was probably the more painful of the injuries but one that healed up. It was the lack of communication between my husband and me that caused the crash and we really have looked back over that, talked about it so that we really understood what happened, so it would never happen again. We failed to communicate what we were going to do when we got to a junction. He was riding the front, right front position, and I was left rear. I thought we were going straight; he thought we were turning when we got to that junction, we hadn't communicated well enough when we started our ride and that's what caused that crash. And I'll promise you that won't happen again. We have learned to communicate a lot better and also agree that no matter what happens, the lead rider makes the decision about where we're going and if it's a wrong turn, too bad, we'll fix it later. We're never going to have a situation like that again.

But I am representative of that group of people with who we have seen crashes increase 400% and I think it's something very important for us to do something about. Safety has to be our number one priority at US DOT whether it's Federal Highway, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or the Agency as a whole; it is the number one priority. And I think you would have to agree with me that the data is screaming for us to do something about motorcyclist safety. It is telling us that disproportionate to the rest of the population, disproportionate to the rest of the groups that we can identify in terms of fatalities and injuries, and we are just seeing exponential increases in motorcycle injuries and fatalities. We've got to do something about that. Part of that is behavioral it's making sure that riders understand the responsibilities of getting on a bike, educating them about the importance of wearing their helmets and safety gear and renewing their skills. And Kathy that is just what I had an opportunity to do with you. I hadn't ridden for so long and I, at least, went out and took the safety course before I got on that bike again. Now I had already bought it, that was probably not smart. I had already bought the bike, but at least I took the safety course.

Because I can relate to this issue, it is an issue that I'm going to take a personal interest in. I'm going to meet with manufacturers, as I indicated, and sit down and ask them what they can do to help us improve motorcycle safety. I'm going to talk about how we get the safety message through and I'm going to listen to groups like you who really drill down on this issue and have a look at it. I want to recommend for your reading and if you haven't read it I would recommend that you get a copy of this book. It's A National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety (NAMS). Some of you around the table, or organizations you represent, participated in developing these recommendations and it's very important that not only US DOT implement these recommendations but that we look at these recommendations being implemented across the broad range of the groups that you represent as well. Now your particular charge is looking at the roadways. The way we design or repair our roadways, what kind of barriers we put up, when and where and how we can use technology to address motorcycle safety, that is your specific charge. I do understand that, but I would ask you not to forget the relationship to other aspects of motorcycling safety as well. The education, the enforcement, the emergency response part of it, all can be part of saving lives and preventing injuries. Now you've all been selected because of your leadership, your capability, your expertise on this topic. Is anyone around the table not a rider who is actually on the advisory committee? I thought not. I suspected that every one of you were riders, as well, so you take this very personally also. So on behalf of President Bush, again let me thank you for your dedication and for your being here today. I know you're busy people and you have lots of other things you could be doing with your time and I am very grateful that you are here today to help us do something about motorcycling safety. I very much look forward to your deliberations and your recommendations. Thank you so much.

(Applause)

Sec. Peters: I apologize that I can't stay with you any longer today, I have to go back and take care of a couple of other meetings but I look forward to seeing some of you later this week informally and again good luck with your deliberations and I'll be very interested to hear what you have to say. Thank you.

Ms. Bents: I think the Secretary did a great job for setting the tone of our meeting and highlighting for us the important issues that we are here to address. Next we're going to hear from Mike Halladay who will give us just a very brief overview of the mission of Federal Highway and of the Office of Safety. I asked Mike to do this for us because I certainly didn't appreciate fully the role of the Federal Government versus that of State and Local Governments in many of these issues and topics so in educating me I thought it might be helpful to some of you, as well. Mike.

Mr. Halladay: Thank you, Fran. Actually I'm not going to do that yet, I'm going to talk about some of the legislative actions. What I'm going to do is just go through what we have in the meeting packet. Fran did a quick overview of our meeting agenda and certainly, as she mentioned and the Secretary did also, the importance of this meeting; the value comes from what the members will be hearing and contributing. We, at Federal Highway, just as our administrator said, are excited about this opportunity and I'm the representative from the sponsoring office. The sponsoring office in the Federal Highway Administration is the Office of Safety, and as part of that presentation we'll go through some of our priority areas just to give everybody a feeling for who Federal Highway is and a little about the Office of Safety. I first wanted to make sure we were all on the same level field in terms of the legislative mandate, this openness, this group and, in fact, the meeting purpose today.

What I want to do is go through some of the materials in the packet and make sure that everyone was very familiar with them. First of all, the SAFETEA-LU was signed and has the section that designated the formation of this committee. That page is purple, the purple page in the packet. I just want to highlight a couple of things here. That's the page where there's the legislative mandate, saying the Secretary, acting through the Administrator, will appoint this group. And what we did moving forward with that in Federal Highway Administration, we had a Federal Register announcement, announcing the formation of this group; nominations for members were to come in. The scope of the membership is defined in the legislation and is pretty specific bringing together important groups, representatives certainly from the highway construction and state DOT communities, motorcycle associations, all the members that are represented here. The overall purpose, as defined there, would be to coordinate with and advise the administrator on infrastructure issues that concern motorcyclists including , as the Secretary mentioned, some of the infrastructure issues, barrier design, road design, construction, maintenance practices, architecture, implementation of ideas, technologies and as Fran mentioned, with our agenda, we'll be getting into that once we get to the meat of the agenda.

The overall scope of the group, the purple sheet and the green pages, this is the Charter which again, I hope you all have had a chance to go through. I just wanted to highlight a couple of things there to sort of set the stage for the deliberation stage conversation. The overall objectives and duties, number three, if you will, on the charter, consistent with the scope, shows that the MAC doesn't exercise program management or regulation elements or make decisions directly affecting the program, but it does provide a forum for the development of consideration and communication of information from a knowledgeable and independent perspective. I think as Secretary Peters said of the background, the experiences, the knowledge that everyone around this table brings, we're very interested in hearing about. The important output, obviously, is the advice and recommendations coming from this group.

Number four outlines the Office of Safety as the sponsoring entity and I am the Designated Federal Official (DFO) for this group. What does this really mean? Essentially what this means is I'm the representative to serve as the government's agent for all matters relating to what the council is doing. And it's a broad statement with lots of potential aspects and frankly, it's a new role for me. I , we, at Federal Highway, the Office of Safety, have not sponsored, not been part of an advisory committee before. So in a sense I'm learning, just as you are, in terms of those responsibilities. So there are certain authorities, certain responsibilities but truly the conduct of the meeting, the input is what you, the members, are going to be offering today and in future meetings. My intent, and Fran will also talk about this, is really to respect everyone's contributions; help the Council to keep a focus on the topics within the charter, and really go forward that way.

The rest of the Charter talks about membership, appointments, meetings, we do intend to have meetings at least once a year, in D.C. There will be Federal Register announcement and other items there. We talked a lot about, as we formulated this agenda, what we wanted to accomplish at this first meeting. As we say, the appointments are for a two year period and, unless extended, that's considered the life cycle of the group. What we envision is, of course, more than one meeting. When we thought about the purpose of this meeting, we certainly can talk about that further in terms of what the members would like to accomplish today, but just to put something out there, as the initial gathering of the Committee, really what we thought was for all of us to get to know the issues and establish some sense of the priorities, the top priorities of the members, which you'd like to focus on. And establish a framework for these issues and a process for building consensus and providing advice. You may or may not want to have advice, recommendations coming out of this first meeting, but certainly to get to know the issues, to talk about where they stand in terms of your thought process and priorities and really establish a process that will endure.

And again, we have a lot of time for open discussion on issues throughout the day and we can talk about that purpose and how it goes forward. I really urge everyone to take advantage of the time here; share your ideas and concerns; understand the recommendations will be advisement to Federal Highway. We're really looking for that comprehensive approach that Secretary Peters mentioned and I urge you folks to focus on the infrastructure issues but not forget the other parts. And I wanted to add my thanks for accepting the appointment to the committee. I'm really looking forward to working with this group; we have other folks from Federal Highway that, throughout the morning, you'll get a chance to talk with. There are a lot of folks within my office who are interested in those recommendations coming forward. I'm interested in working with the group and I think we have an exciting time in front of us. Any questions or observations or concerns about the Charter or Mission at this point, before I turn it over, back over to Fran to go through the next step? Thanks.

Ms. Bents: What I'd like to do next is to just to go around the room and ask you each to tell the group who you are and the areas of particular concern that you may have regarding motorcycle safety. So Mark, may we pick on you first?

Mr. Bloschock: Oh, absolutely. I'm Mark Bloschock from Texas DOT and I've spent about 27 years down at the Texas DOT. I also, excuse me, first thing in the morning it's a little tough to talk, I'll warm up.

Ms. Bents: Me, too.

Mr. Bloschock: I am a motorcyclist. I do own a Harley and I get around a little bit. Like all the things that you just heard I'd like to pick on safety, which is one of my passions, and I pick on the Texas DOT mission statement and I'd like to read it and I always just read it frequently and it's the mission of the Texas Department of Transportation to provide a safe, and do I have to read the rest of it? And that's the point I always make, in fact, in this many years I've forgotten what the rest of it is. So everything really has to be safe first. And that is certainly my passion with car, commercial truck traffic and then also with motorcycles. So, thank you. Looking forward to this.

Ms. Bents: Thank you, Mark.

Mr. Bloschock: You bet.

Mr. Vaughn: My name is Don Vaughn. I'm Chief Engineer, Deputy Director of Operations for the Alabama DOT. I am a motorcycle rider. I've been with DOT for 35 years. I had a motorcycle in college. After I graduated from college and living in Montgomery the traffic was so bad I sold my motorcycle and I said, "I'm never going to get on one again." But I turned 50 and I was in Arizona and saw people ride in the wide open spaces of Arizona and I told my wife, mentioned to my wife, I think I'd like to have a motorcycle again. Not knowing what kind of reaction I was going to get, she said. "Well you're 50 years old, what are you waiting for?" So I went and bought a motorcycle. I did attend the safety course while waiting for the motorcycle to be delivered and that's an excellent way to get started again. My top issue, I guess, in the DOT is that we design, maintain and construct new roadways. We don't give enough attention to the motorcycle aspects of what we're doing. One thing I did notice one time riding on an Alabama road. I went on a trip. We had milled the pavement surface, I was gone for three days and came back and the pavement surface was still milled and had not been overlaid. So we have a new policy now that when we mill we overlay the same day or we don't leave the milled road open. So things like that are what I'm interested in; integrating the thinking about motorcycles while handling our main construction operations.

Ms. Van Kleeck: Hi, I'm Kathy Van Kleeck and I'm Senior Vice President of Government Relations with the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and it would be an exaggeration to say I'm a motorcyclist. I have owned a motorcycle that was stolen but, I've been involved with the MSF and the Motorcycle Industry Council for over 30 years so between my experience and everyone at MSF we have a great deal of expertise and experience in motorcycle safety issues with NHTSA we facilitated the development of the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety which Secretary Peters referred to and which indeed does have a section on infrastructure issues and I was involved with a number of you in the room with developing the NAMS.

MSF primarily is responsible for the development of rider education and training systems Life Long Learning and has developed The Basic Rider course, The Experienced Rider course, and now the continuum of courses so motorcyclists can be life long learners. So primarily we are, our mission is, to provide rider education training opportunities for life long learning, but are involved in all aspects of motorcycle safety, infrastructure issues, and I think that our priorities, Don stated them very well on the infrastructure side of things, to try to ensure that road considerations include oversight with considerations and maintenance aspects of that and the design, as well, are very important considering that motorcycles have different use than auto drivers.

Mr. McClune: I'm Bob McClune, I'm the Executive Vice President of Potters Industries. Potters is a global highway safety company located, headquartered, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. I've been with Potters for over 20 years and involved with highway safety and the issues of all highway safety for the past 20 years. My specific area of expertise is roadway delineation and pavement marking. I am a 40 year motorcycle rider and active enthusiast and my most recent claim to fame is in early August I rode, not trailered, to Sturgis from Philadelphia and made it safely.

Mr. Salontai: Hi, I'm Gerry Salontai. I'm with Kleinfelder. We're a private engineering and consulting firm. A large portion of our business is in the highway transportation marketplace. I'm here representing ARBTA, the American Road Builders and Transportation Association. So I bring the unique perspective from the design side, obviously, but also the perspective from the motorcycle riding side of the equation here for this council. I've ridden motorcycles for 35 years, about half of it off road and half of it on the road and have seen a lot. It seems like in recent years, if I have to have some priorities, it seems like in recent years, especially in more metropolitan areas the merge transitions, whether they're three-way, interchange, merges or on ramp seems to be getting shorter and shorter and I believe that has created erratic automobile driving and it has caused some erratic movements that I think are attributed to design and I also agree with the milling and if I think some more I'll come up with some others as the day progresses. Thanks.

Mr. Zimmer: My name is Steve Zimmer. I'm the Executive Director of ABATE Ohio. I have 35 years as a motorcyclist, constantly, consistently. I am also a life member of Freedom Road Riders, a motorcycle rights organization, in Missouri and I've been involved with motorcycling from that standpoint for 25 years now and I'm a member of the Transportation Research Board Motorcycle and Moped Committee. I was a member of the working group at National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety, it's been mentioned. Motorcycle safety is something that has become a passion, something that I feel very strongly about as all of us do on a daily basis and I take it more personally because these are not just numbers and faceless people. These are our friends. So it's important to me to do whatever I can to try to improve motorcycling in the country as it affects directly people I know on a daily basis.

Issues that I think we definitely need to bring up to discussion: construction, a serious issue, the road milling, notification of those issues to motorcyclists is very important. Maintenance practices, tar snakes, things of that nature, steel plates and gratings are very serious issues to motorcyclists; rumble strips, those types of things, those are all things that we need to discuss here. Intelligent transportation is another issue we need to be concerned about because as intelligent transportation systems develop we need to make sure that motorcycles are considered in the development and are not excluded at the end. And, so I think it's a serious issue and things need to be considered from the construction and highway standpoint. So I'm very pleased and honored to be here as part of this group and thank you.

Ms. Bents: Thanks, Steve.

Mr. Killion: I"˜m Darrel Killion. I'm a state coordinator for ABATE, S.D. I've been a motorcycle rider for, jeeze, pushing 45 years now and I sit on the South Dakota Highway Safety Committee and also on the South Dakota Motorcycle Sub-committee. I am more than honored to be here I have to say that. I really didn't expect that some sparsely populated, remote state like South Dakota would, you know even get here. But at the time that we discussed whether or not my nomination, the big point was, we have the largest rally in the world for motorcycling and we also have an inordinate amount of fatalities on our roadways because of that rally and we feel we have something to contribute to this whole program and certainly we have hopefully experienced some things and so perhaps our DOT people have tried to deal with, perhaps we maybe need help but we think we're getting there, traffic flows are much smoother now and so on at the rally. It use to be a complete madhouse, to say that we reduced fatalities would probably be an overstatement, we think we have in the last two years but it's still way too high and we need to find more answers and hopefully that's going to be part of the result that we get here.

Mr. Hennie: Hi, I'm Jeff Hennie with Motorcycle Riders Foundation. In the interest of full disclosure, my organization is why everybody is here. We work with the Congress lobbying the Federal Government and the Congress began drafting the most recent Highway Bill, and we took a look at it and said, what can we do, what can we get out of the Highway Bill to improve motorcycle safety? We looked at a lot of states that have been affected and a lot of states have this similar council of some kind that maybe they focus their energies on issues besides infrastructure but we thought that would be something good to have at the federal level.

The other counterpart to that legislation was a grant called RAMNET (?) which recently sent a couple thousand dollars short of six million dollars across the country to 44 different states to use for driver education to teach people how to use motorcycles and awareness campaigns: like the Motorcycles Share the Road, that sort of thing. So we're real proud about that. I'm going to hold off on identifying any particular issues, I think we agree with Steve on some of the pavement marking issues, some of the barrier design issues is about as far as I'm listing specifics. So thanks for being here. We're real excited about this and all my members are really happy about this and are looking forward to some great stuff.

Ms. Bents: Sean.

Mr. Maher: Good morning. I'm Sean Maher with American Motorcyclist Association, the Director of State Affairs out of the Headquarters Office near Columbus, OH. I'm filling in today for Ed Moreland. Ed's out of the country so this may be the only time that I attend one of these meeting as a substitute. I was part of the technical working group that Steve Zimmer had worked on, putting together the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety. Maybe we could all get copies of that or at least a copy of the infrastructure chapter because we have some real good information in there. As far as prioritizing goes, I go along with what Steve Zimmer said and I think Don mentioned it too, I think the maintenance practices and construction practices - things that kind of crop up as sort of a temporary issue might be something more to focus on than the things that are more permanent structure because motorcyclists can adjust to those, it's more the temporary things that are going to crop up and they're going to have to deal with on short notice, and similarly, intelligent transportation systems. We've been involved with ITS America for some time and have done some work with, I think it's called WAG 14 which was involved in developing the standards for automated cruise control. We did some work with them putting the motorcycle out there, actually, I was the target motorcycle, you know, tracking motorcycles as a target. I had a good experience with that and I just think that there's a lot more that can be done there so it's a good area to look at.

Ms. Bents: Well, thank you all. I think you've certainly mentioned many of the topics which we hoped to be discussing today and as Jeff mentioned this is your meeting and this is the opportunity to focus on infrastructure. There are certainly other committees, foe example, the NTSB Forum that addresses many issues of importance to motorcyclists, but I don't know of others, certainly in recent years where we really get to talk about things like roadway design, maintenance, construction and so forth. So, I'd like to spend just a minute talking a little about your meeting. I'm here to help you and I think we would all appreciate keeping the meeting somewhat informal. We are here to discuss and explore and join together and certainly each of you represent different organizations and agencies, but we're here because of our common interests in and commitment to motorcyclist safety. As I help you today, I will do my very best to make sure each of your voices is heard, because it's very important for us to move forward as a group, as a council. This will be certainly the beginning of the efforts, as Mike said this morning to establish a framework to serve as an advisory council to the Federal Highway Administration. And so, as we get to know the issues, establish our priorities, I'm going to try to help you reach decisions and reach consensus. There are a couple of things I tend to do when I facilitate meetings. I may ask you for additional information. We will be preparing a report, as I mentioned, and it's important for me to understand what you're saying and perhaps sometimes I will be speaking on behalf of some others. I will periodically summarize where we are and what we have achieved. We are on the same team here and I certainly would expect everyone to listen with interest and respond with interest to each of the points of view, regardless of titles at your own office here we are all council members. Well, you are, I'm just pretending. And please note that the Designated Federal Official, Mike, has the authority and the responsibility to adjourn the meeting if doing so is in the public interest. So the next thing I would do is (laughter) be nice to Mike if you want to spend the day.

Mr. Halladay: I don't think that's going to be necessary.

Ms. Bents: What I'd like to do is just have us all agree upon some ground rules, so that then we can move forward. So I've drafted a couple, you actually do need to let me know if you agree with these or if you have some others. I suggest that we try to stay focused on the agreed upon topic, clearly there are lots of topics that the council will want to address in the course of the future: this meeting and future meetings, but if we can pick one and really work that one and stay focused on it I think we will be able to achieve some success. As I will ask for clarification, I would certainly expect that you will do the same. I have a microphone here and I will be passing that around. I think it's easier, certainly as the day goes on, for us all to just use a microphone rather than try to keep our voices high, Plus it just helps me to be sure that each of you gets an opportunity to speak, so I will be using that. Listen carefully with interest, show respect for everyone, including your facilitator. Let's focus on our issues and positions that we may have brought because again we are one council and make decisions by consensus. Do you have something to which you object or something you would like to add? Oh, you're an easy group, come on. Alright, well with that I will refer to my previous introduction then of Mike and his overview of the Office of Safety.

Mike Halladay: Thank you. I'm just going to stay seated, this is very informal. I appreciate some of the remarks, in terms of both the sort of formality of being a member of an advisory committee, it is a very important responsibility, something that you do maintain, to make sure it is adequately prepared through my responsibilities, with Fran's helping that. But during the conversations, during the points that come up, the more informal we can be, if you will, get to know each other, the positions, the issues people want to bring to the table and so forth. When we first were envisioning what we wanted to accomplish, one of the goals of this first meeting, we didn't want to have a lot of talking heads, you know, telling you folks, we want to hear from you, but one of the presentations we wanted to do, which we hope would be valuable to you, was to giving you a grounding on Federal Highway Administration, within US DOT, some of our partners, some of our programs, how we move those programs forward, just the context, if you will, in terms of how those recommendations may come into the department.

Many of you are very familiar with this, some of you are not, what we thought about this presentation, though I'll try to go through fairly quickly, certainly if there are any questions or any perspectives if you want to ask about as I go through the points, let me know, but the purpose of my starting out with this kind of overview, is, as I said, so that you know the context within which recommendations will come to the Federal Highway Administrator, the U. S. DOT and some of our authorities and basically who we are. And then you've got this if you need it in the future.

Ms. Bents: Given our luck with the equipment this morning, I hope that Shelley can help you start the presentation.

Mr. Halladay: O.K., if it doesn't work, Shelley. O.K., just look at Federal Highway Administration and then where Safety Priority Initiatives are, the Federal Highway Administration is an agency of close to 3,000 folks and we're responsible for the overall federal aid program. Major funding engine, if you will, for many state DOTs. Safety is now a core funding element within that program, but of course it's not the only funding element. We have a number of funding streams that go to the state DOTs and localities over the country. Our headquarters' office is what you're dealing with here today at the Office of Safety. We have other core business units, if you will, represented in our headquarters office. Safety is one of them but the others are the Infrastructure Office, and we work very closely with them obviously on construction, maintenance, and design issues. Our Office of Planning and Environment is where project development, GIS requirements, the planning process resides. We have and Office of Operations, we have a Federal Lands Office that is responsible for working with Park Service and other federal agencies on federal land projects.

So our headquarters' offices are most of the core businesses, they're also supported by Support Offices on Research and Technology, Course Administration, Legal, Professional Development, other aspects. We're responsible to headquarters level for overall national development, national policy development, making sure that throughout the agency we're going forward with reasonable policies and consistent policies. We have field offices, we have division offices in every state. Their most direct partner is our state DOTs but certainly our funding categories also, are in many cases, especially at Safety, are eligible for localities, cities and counties also happen to develop funding. So our field offices consist of anywhere from smaller divisions of 12-15 people, all the way up to the 50's. They are really closest to the customer to delivering federal aid funds, interpreting policies in moving federal aid programs forward. We also have resource centers throughout the country. They're represented in various locations across the country. They focus on technical assistance and training activities. We have a technical service team on safety and design and so when we work with the elements of disseminating, training, getting technical assistance out in any number of safety elements, and we'll talk about those priorities shortly. We also work with our field offices, we work with our resource centers. The highway transportation community is really pretty complex.

I've borrowed these sorts of visuals some that I've used and others have used in various forms when we just want to get across the sort of various elements that are part of moving a modern Department of Transportation forward at the state level, federal level and so forth. Planning, policy, infrastructure, operations, safety, finance, research so forth, all these elements we have relationships with various elements, other offices with Highway Administration, certainly within state DOTs , in associations representing localities and others.

Within our headquarters' Office of Safety, this is a quick look at some of the functions and responsibilities within our office. Jeff Lindley is part of the Federal Highway Leadership Team, reporting directly into our front office. Rick Capka, our executive director, is the Associate Administrator for Safety. I, myself, am an Office Director reporting to Jeff, safety integration. We have Safety Design Office headed up by John Baxter and we have a couple of representatives from that office here with us today, actually. Mary McDonough heads up the Roadway Departure Team and on that team Dick Powers is here today and some of you were talking with him this morning. Then again those folks move forward roadside designs, geometrics, roadway departure countermeasures, intersections, a number of other things that you can see there.

We have Safety Programs, that the office that moves forward the major funding categories, these are highway safety plan requirements, that's headed up by Beth Alicandri. We have my office that really brings together a number of cross cutting elements, partnerships, legislation, regulations, international programs, work zones, motorcyclists and several other things. Our support team then really moves forward with our unit planning, finance, communication, outreach, human resources, and other elements. So that's the Office of Safety within the Federal Highway Administration Headquarters. As I say, we work very closely with our resource centers, technical support team on safety, that consists of about 15-18 people who are out in the country helping with technical assistance, training and safety. And then within each of our divisional offices, we have one or more safety specialists that work on safety programs directly with state DOTs and others in that state. And then, as they say, for Research and Development Office we have people that are moving forward with safety research. You'll hear about some of those things perhaps as we go through the day. A few words about the institutional framework at Traffic Safety, we have the representatives, obviously here, from the federal level. In addition to the Federal Highway Administration, obviously, safety is very multi-dimensional. Mary Peters touched on that.

We are pleased to have a couple of representatives from NHTSA who work closely with Sue Ryan's office who directs safety programs and with her today is Bill Cosby, who works most especially on motorcycles. Well at the national level, we coordinate with others within the Federal Highway Administration, with other agencies within U.S. DOT and, in fact, other federal agencies, other federal departments, on those national programs. The states, for the most part, own and operate the system, obviously, state DOTs, traffic safety entities, Mary Peters touched on the four "e"s of safety. In a lot of state organizations that is spread through different organizations, different entities within the state, state DOT, Highway Safety Office, State Police, other enforcement entities, emergency services, various organizations out there move those programs forward. And then, as they say, also, when we talk about safety, especially we have to look at the local, beyond the state owned and operated system into what the cities and counties and townships and so forth in this country, over 35,000 entities actually own and operate some part of the transportation network. It gets very complex for a number of reasons.

Safety, in particular, is an issue that transcends the local jurisdictions so a lot of our programs look for how we can get those tools, techniques and message out to the locals. We really work across the board with professional academic institutions, associations, such as many of the folks represented here, state DOT associations, Governor's Highway Safety Representatives in the safety field, ATSA, having a nomination to this membership and certainly the private sector. So, it's a very complex institutional framework that goes forward for highway safety. When we talk about highway safety a lot of folks focus on what William Haddon first put together, in terms of what happens within a crash, what are the elements of that. This is the Haddon matrix, essentially, customized for motorcycles. I'll give credit for this for Diane Wigle who's in Sue's office and thank her for letting me borrow this. But I wanted to just say a few words in terms of looking at the crash problem. Across top row crash prevention, what's happening that can prevent that crash from happening in the first place? What's happening with the human in the system, the rider, the driver? What's happening with the vehicle to avoid that crash? And then how are the environmental conditions, the roadway features contributing to preventing that crash? In the crash event itself, should it happen, how do you mitigate the injury, the seriousness of that crash? Again, what choices were made by the rider, the driver? What choices were made within the vehicle design and in the roadway design, and then emergency response, post-crash, again, environmental conditions and so forth? Within federal programs, that's why when we talk about safety it's a very comprehensive approach.

Federal Highway Administration, of course, and what this membership will, for the most part be focusing on, will be in the upper right and middle right road-way design structure operations, roadway maintenance that might affect crash prevention and mitigate it, So, again, when we work those issues we work with NHTSA, for heavy vehicles we work with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and all their partners. And it is a comprehensive approach. I probably don't need to go through this education, enforcement, engineering, operations, implementing those four "e"s. That strategic approach is something that we in Highway Administration have a particular mandate to really move forward with, in a more formal way, what SAFETEA-LU gives us. A few words about that but what is happening within the state DOT structure, state DOTs have responsibility and leadership for moving forward teaching highway safety plans in which the needs of the stakeholders are coming into that. Steve, I think you mentioned you're a member of that, excuse me, that was Darrel, you said you were a member of that committee within South Dakota, I think that was the group that is part of the partnership that is moving forward teaching highway safety plans and you're familiar with that?

Mr. Killion: Yes.

Mr. Halladay: Good. Data driven decision making is our goal. Secretary Peters touched on the data. It is screaming out to her, screaming out to us. We also looked across the board about what the data is telling us across that board. It is safety plans, comprehensive approach, the needs of all roadways. I do want to touch on Federal Highway Administration and much of the data. What are the areas that are driving our programs? Within Jeff's office we look at where we place our people, our resources, our priorities. We really look at the data and it tells us about three main areas: roadway departure, intersections and pedestrians. So those become the priority focus areas within what are crash types, if you will, that our office is moving forward, and just a few words about each. Some of these might be dated. I think the numbers themselves are probably not up to date in terms of 2005 numbers but three roadway departure fatalities every hour, one injury every minute, run off the road preponderance maybe about two thirds head-on crashes, also. What are we doing about that? What types of solutions are there for moving hazards? Designing and implementing crash-worthy devices, improving visibility, warning drivers that they're about ready to leave the road and I realize that some of these issues that we're talking about are issues of maintenance and construction.

We have a couple of other examples that we wanted to focus on because I think this group is particularly interested in run off the road, so let's just go on in terms of some of the other counter-measures. Removing obstacles, sometimes it's sensitive, in terms of the environmental community, but sometimes it is the right decision based on traffic, based on the experiences on the road before and after, obviously you have a safety condition for potential run off the road crashes. Relocating those obstacles, just taking care of that safety problem through engineering and relocation of obstacles, shielding the obstacles where you can't relocate them, keeping the car, other vehicles, away from those obstacles and keeping vehicles from running across the medians into opposing traffic. And yes the growing use of cable median barriers has been notable for that. Delineating obstacles when you can't necessarily remove them, shield them, or otherwise take care of them, again, not an ideal solution but in terms of certain traffic conditions and such could be the right thing to be doing. Alert drivers to conditions, shoulder rumble strips, next, again, list examples on a two lane rural roadway to put paved asphalt over where they know then rumble strips that are important for tired, distracted drivers, it's a very successful counter-measure in many cases, and in some cases the center line again the highway community as a whole gathering more and more information, evaluation and effectiveness of these sorts of things.

I wanted to touch on a couple of our other priorities, intersection crashes, one fatality, one intersection related fatality every hour, again, a high priority area for my office moving forward where they're happening, materials, collectors, locals and just a quick view of that. How are we responding? There is a National Intersection Agenda. We have, in addition to Mary McDonough leading our roadway departure team, a team leader for the intersection safety team. That's Ed Rice who is responsible for moving forward with the transportation community, the safety community on intersection safety, National Agenda, intersection design issues and operation, roundabouts. I do realize this group might certainly have some observations and some issues in terms of intersections and interchange design by assuming, recognizing what my assessment is to roadway departure. Pedestrians are the third major crash types that we focus on. One pedestrian is killed every 2 hours, vulnerable road user that's sometimes very difficult to get out. In addition to the team liaison on roadway departure and intersections we have Tamara Redmon creating the team on pedestrian crashes. And again a number of programs from engineering outreach campaigns, ITS, engineering based countermeasures for walkways, for pedestrians at intersections, and then a lot of outreach activities, actually, in terms of community groups. In particular there is a CD, and various step programs used in schools. In addition to these main areas, there's a number of cross-cutting, in what we would term emerging areas that our office pays attention to. One of the models is motorcycle safety but we also work with NHTSA in speed management, the needs of rural America, rural roads are tough nut to crack in terms of how to go about safety counter-measures, how do you really prevent what are sometimes very widely spaced and random occurrences if you will but we know that it's a major safety problem out there on rural roads. Older road users, the demographics, certainly within the motorcycle community, Mary touched on those, the Secretary touched on those facts and it's also true within the overall driving community, obviously. What we can do within the infrastructure to be part of that solution is necessary and is certainly supporting NHTSA's lead in safety belts and the importance of primary safety belt laws.

And then to end, to just touch on some of the key things that we're working on out of the new legislation, we're excited about what it gave us for safety, the Federal Highway Administration, the Department as a whole, these particular points are again some areas that we talk about in Federal Highway doubling the amount of money coming out through state DOTs to address safety problems. This is the Highway Safety Recruitment Program for funding programs for teaching highway safety plans, state DOTs, that have a need for within each state but they are required to coordinate with a number of other groups. These are intended to be comprehensive, data driven programs and there is flexibility within the programs but we know that good planning is a component.

I want to touch on the motorcycle elements again and thanks to Diane for pulling all these things together and NHTSA does have the lead on most of these programs, I think as most around the table would recognize, the Impaired Motorcycle Riding Study is going forward. The Advisory Council is section 1914 is up and running. FHWA does have responsibility for moving forward with this crash causation study. We have partners out in our Research and Development Office and in fact have NHTSA personnel on detail working with folks in our research office on that causation study which has been refocused out of Oklahoma State and then other section 2010 language, again that our NHTSA partners are moving forward in the, as we mentioned, the funding stream to the 44 states that will be coming out this last month and that's a quick overview. As I mentioned, I wanted to give you sort of a framework, a foundation for Federal Highway, the types of things we focus on, some of the people that are here as resources if the numbers are needed, what we can add to the conversation today, always a top priority at U.S. DOT, Federal Highway Administration. Any observations, any perspectives, questions? That's the bit about the organization, where we're coming from. That's the only prepared power point presentation you're going to see today, the rest is up to you. But any observations, questions, clarifications?

Ms. Van Kleeck: Just kind of an observation. I was intrigued by the Office of Safety Design and Pedestrians and rights under it and your office having motorcycles and generally we're lumped in with all the road users, pedestrians and bicycles and it actually seems like we are more of a road user than they are so perhaps that's not the best lumping, but I wondered if motorcycles had always been under your office?

Mr. Halladay: No they haven't, they really haven't. I will tell you actually that is a recent change, mainly because of the responsibility of this group, this Advisory Council, to move forward with really cross-cutting recommendations. John Baxter does lead safety programs and actually that's a fairly recent change also. The pedestrian, bicycles responsibilities, up until a few months ago, had been within Beth Alicandri's Safety Programs. What we moved forward with was combining the major crash types, the major strategies and countermeasures development under John Baxter. So when we have recommendations out of this group, and the reason motorcycles would be identified with my office is, as I say, primarily responsible for liaison to this group but many of the elements of my office do cross into other offices. In this case they will certainly also. So John Baxter's office is represented here today with Mary and Dick Powers and the recommendations which come through, in terms of construction and design issues, roadway departure, intersection we definitely will be engaging those folks.

Mr. Vaughn: Mike, on one of your slides, I think I read it had motorcycle crash causation. Is that a research effort?

Mr. Halladay: Yes, it is.

Mr. Vaughn: What's the status of that?

Mr. Halladay: A quick status and Sue, you might actually be able to say more about that than I can. There was a pilot effort that was completed by NHTSA and the crash causation study was actually an earmarked activity within SAFTEA-LU that came to Federal Highway Administration to execute. Carol Tan, within our Research and Development office has the lead for that and we're in the process of contracting with the recipient, which is Oklahoma State University to move forward with that program and I think the latest I heard is that a lot of the contracting language has been completed, I believe there is concern about sources of match and monies being assembled for matching the federal funds that are ready to get up and running and I believe that's the latest on that. That was one of the things that was presented at the recent NTSB two day forum and there is a lot of interest in the outcomes of that so that's getting ready to get up and running and will include the surveys for improved accident analysis and really get a much better handle on really what are the factors contributing to causing motorcycle crashes.

Mr. Vaughn: I would think the results of that study would be very helpful to this group.

Mr. Halladay: And some of the infrastructure issues certainly are part of the analysis planned for that study, it is important, Sue?

Ms Ryan: Another thing I want to add is the pilot study is not complete. That's still ongoing and feeds into the larger study that was mandated by Congress.

Ms. Bents: I'm actually responsible for that contract so if you have detailed questions you can come talk to me during the break.

Mr. Halladay: Fran has many skills. She brings a good background in motorcycle safety. Anything else before, and perhaps just before we go to break and I know Don you had mentioned that you won't be able to be here all day. Does anyone else, in terms of conducting who might have input and so forth, does anyone have any constraints that maybe Fran should know about?

Mr. Salontai: I need to leave by probably 3:15 pm.

Mr. Halladay: Oh, O.K. and Don, your time frame is?

Mr. Vaughn: My flights at noon.

Mr. Halladay: We might want to hear from Don right away.

Ms. Bents: We'll take care of Don's issues first, yes. O.K. Well, thank you so much for that. Let's take a 15 minute break, get us back here by about ten past 10:00 am and during that time think about what the prime issues might be and we'll give Don two votes since he'll have to leave us a little early today. There is a little coffee shop/café out the door and to your left and the rest rooms are out the door and to your left at the end of the hall.

Ms. Bents: Mike has a couple of things he would like to say as we reconvene.

Mr. Halladay: A couple of points I neglected to mention. One of the members was going to be here, Ken Kephart, certainly planned on being here, he had confirmed and very unfortunately, he had an illness in the family that he had to take care of so he was not able to arrange a replacement but Ken should be with us today but was not able to make it. I also just wanted to clarify one thing I said in terms of the two year term. That is a standard feature of the federal advisory committee and it's not something that we impose as part of a decision out of Federal Highway Administration or U.S. DOT so certainly if there is a good reason and progress and value we would support extending and that's certainly something we can do and recommend into the Secretary's office. But the two year term, if you will, is something that is featured in the federal advisory committee act.

Mr. Bloshock: I agree that it would be great to have that causation study information so one of my questions is part of our responsibility to try to develop as much information as we can beyond our own personal experiences. I mean, how do we bring to bear the maximum amount of information to create change or improvement?

Mr. Halladay: Or to really start to analyze what the right recommendation would be

Mr. Bloschock: Right, right, that's my first question. Is there, I mean do we base it on our own personal judgment.

Mr. Salontai: You know I feel the same way. I'm an engineer and I like science to back up recommendations and actions that we take, rather than just approaching something from the wishing standpoint. But at the same time what I would like to see as a result of this work is an awareness in the design, construction and maintenance process of the motorcyclists' needs, the shoulder drop offs and the pavement drop offs, rumble strips. When we design those treatments we do it based on science of automobile behavior and there's no motorcycle behavioral factors, it's not in the thought process. I guess that's what I'm trying to say and if somehow we can bring that awareness forward, while we're waiting on the science, maybe, to help us with some specific recommendations. To me that would be a very good accomplishment of this group and I don't know if we need to do that with a publication or what form that needs to take but I would like to see an increased awareness of motorcyclists' needs in the highway maintenance process and in the design process and in construction.

Ms. Bents: Thanks, Don.

Mr. Bloschock: That leads me to my second question, which I didn't get to, what is the, where does this information go? Are we going to make some recommendations and then are they going to go to Federal Highway to review and analyze and possibly implement into design, construction or maintenance and then does that filter down to the DOTs ? Where does our input go after this? I don't think that's been really covered, maybe I missed it.

Mr. Halladay: No, the advice, the nature of the advice of this advisory committee is to the Secretary of DOT through the Federal Highway Administrator, so that would be the official avenue. Now the nature of those recommendations and the nature of that advice is something obviously to work with but they would come to Federal Highway Administration and then that's where our partnership with the state DOTs, with localities, our involvement with ASHTO and others on design standards, guidelines, practices, best practices and so forth, we would have to, based on the nature of the issue and the advice, it might be something that would be a standard setting initiative, or guidelines or best practice. And I think that, I mean the other point that you made, is how you gather information on maybe what is existing out there and I think we will rely a lot on the existing experience base and perhaps the associations that are represented here. Don and Mark work within state DOTs and have entre into the ASHTO environment and perhaps they use those mechanisms to find out what states might have done what on motorcyclists. There are certain things that perhaps Federal Highway could take on in terms of some of the work but we will, for the most part I think, be relying on the resources that members can bring. But the flow of recommendations, the output of this would be to Federal Highway through the sponsoring office to the Federal Highway Administrator and the Secretary.

Mr. Bloschock: Thanks.

Ms. Bents: If we could digress for just a minute because we're going to have to ask Don to leave so that he will be able to make his noon plane. Don, you mentioned raising awareness, are there any other issues you'd like to lay before the group or questions that you may have of us before we get you out on the subway?

Mr. Vaughn: I am sorry I have to leave. Awareness is my big issue right now. I get action reports across my desk every morning and the increase in the motorcycle fatalities is really disturbing to me and it's even caused me to think that maybe I need to get rid of my motorcycle because there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, they're on the increase. I think everybody in this room knows someone who has been in a motorcycle crash. Some of us know some people who have not survived the crashes and I'm in that group. You see things like speeding, alcohol involved, run off the road and some of those things are beyond the charge of this group but the roadway aspect is something that we can do something about that and I would like to know, I wish we had the results of the research that looks at some of the causes because, like I said, being an engineer, I like the science to support the recommendations that come out of any working group. There are things we can do, they're low hanging fruit but I think we can do, as state DOTs, to help with a lot of these things. Some of them have been mentioned around the table, the milling, the rumble strips, things like that, if we can just get the state DOTs to be aware that these things do affect the handling of the motorcycle and maybe address it in a way that is considerate of the motorcycle driver. And basically that's where my interest is and I love to ride my motorcycle and I hope to see the fatalities level off and go down so I don't have to get rid of mine. Thank you very much.

Ms. Bents: Don, thank you.

Mr. McClune: May I just add something that awareness is certainly very, very important. Education, I think is very important and something that just tickled my interest recently is that my motorcycle registration recently came due and I received the renewal notice in the mail and in the envelope, because it was a motorcycle renewal registration it said, "Drive aware, we are out there." It's a little brochure that speaks to looking out for motorcycles. Anticipate how motorcycles will maneuver. Signal your intentions. But it is my understanding that they only send these to the motorcyclists and I really believe that the car drivers when it's time for them to renew their registration this should be in their envelope. I think most motorcycles understand this so I think education is a big part of the issue and the education of automobile drivers is a big part of the problem.

Mr. Halladay: But Bob, think of all the paper that we save.

Ms. Van Kleeck: That is very high on the MSF priority list and we do run the Pennsylvania Motorcycle Safety Program and I actually think that maybe it is going to be in the car driver registrations as well because that really is where the message needs to go

Mr. McClune: It hasn't happened yet because I also have an automobile registration that came due at the same time. This was in the motorcycle registration. It was not in the automobile registration so it's, for me it's an issue.

Ms. Van Kleeck: No, you're perfectly right and we're trying to do that.

Ms. Bents: Well, we're talking about awareness issues and of course it's very important. That is largely a topic that's handled by the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration because they do have jurisdiction over motor vehicles and over riders and education programs, for the most part. This council is focused primarily on roadway issues, roadway design, maintenance and so forth. So is there a way we could help to define this awareness issue in terms of different kinds of road design, road construction, signage, infrastructure?

Mr. Zimmer: I was just going to make some comments that kind of talk about what Don's trying to get to here. Awareness, we tend to think of it as motorist awareness but I think what Don is saying and what we're trying to get to is we need to raise the awareness of the highway facilitators, the people who are doing the design and maintenance and raise their awareness to the motorcycling issues. Simple things like steel plates that go over potholes in the construction area. Why couldn't we put something, not only the signage that says, "steel plates ahead" but the leading edge of that steel plate could get some sort of reflective material that would indicate to the motorcyclist and let him know exactly where that steel plate starts, especially at night, because they're real hard to see but they're slicker than black ice when you hit one if it's a little bit wet. So simple things like that to raise the awareness with the construction engineers, people who are actually out there doing the work on the roads, raise their awareness to motorcycling and have them think about it. Not only just in terms of how does this motorist approach this construction or this hazard but what does a motorcyclist need to know when they reach or are approaching this thing. And that's an awareness issue, not just for the motorcyclist but for the construction team.

Ms. Bents: Excellent. Mark has something to add.

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, I would have to jump in there with you real quick, Steve, I know I made a comment a number of years ago about these big buttons but, traffic buttons, but they weren't really buttons, they're up in Dallas and they're more like half a bowling ball and there was a name for those and I remember when I made the comments there were some high placed tech type folks said, "You know we don't really care about motorcycles." Well I said that was kind of interesting, you know, it's just something that you need to take into account exactly what you're talking about, especially with reflectivity, especially those big button, they're gone now, big cast iron button, they're gone now, but those would certainly, obviously knock a motorcycle down if they weren't delineated properly and you hit one.

Ms. Bents: Could you talk a little about the process, I mean, how was that issue raised to the Texas Department of Transportation? What did it take to get their attention and to make change?

Mr. Bloschock: Well, I guess a little bit like Mary did, I showed up at the meeting holding a motorcycle helmet and so it was my responsibility to bring up some of those issues when they came up. And you know once folks started thinking about it, now this was a number of years ago and I think things have changed a lot as there are more motorcyclists, more awareness of the issues. There's a motorcycle rally is Austin, The Republic of Texas Rally, where 80,000 bikes show up whether they like it or not, they're well aware it's happening. I think it's just a matter of the numbers. I think the awareness has gone up around our DOT, it's just a matter of talking about it. If you talk about the issues then they become important.

Ms. Bents: The advocacy position certainly is helpful.

Mr. McClune: Mike, you spoke earlier about AASHTO, and AASHTO's involvement and I've been involved with the AASHTO organization for years and indeed they're the keepers of the MUTCD and I'm not speaking from fact, but I know their perspective and it gets back to your original point. I know their perspective, having to do with safety, is primarily based and targeted on the automobile and not the motorcycle. So to have some sort of involvement in this discussion, or in this forum, for AASHTO to have some involvement or some kind of communication, I think would be excellent to put in their awareness when they're making their decisions to write these regulations, that the motorcycling issue is important.

I cite, as an example, a little flyer that I just received from ATSSA and it's from Federal Highways and it says, "Safer sign support. Are yours breakaway yet?" And this was a major initiative to change all the signs in the United States to breakaway so that when an automobile hits those signs they either break away or certainly don't come through the windshield and decapitate you. I know a lot of research was done on this and I wonder, I have no idea, but as an example I wonder whether any of the testing and experimenting that was done included motorcycles. I doubt it. Another issue, and I told you earlier that I'm heavily involved with the Departments of Transportation throughout the United States. I know many of the DOTs and I've collected some information from them to bring to this meeting so we can share some of their concerns along the same lines are guard rails. This specifically comes from the canvass on what are the effects of guard rails on motorcycles. I don't think that there's been much research or study. I do know that if I were to hit a guard rail at 60 mph my motorcycle would be stopped and I would be launched into the closest building or tree. So I guess my point is, the thought process of our highway leaders, they've really not taken into consideration motorcycles and obviously now it's growing to the point where we need to do that and that's the reason for this agenda. And if we were to check with our DOT leaders, I think we would find scores of examples of these issues.

Ms. Bents: O.K., those examples are just, I think, what we need to get to, but just one point of clarification. I'm not familiar with ATSSA

Mr. McClune: ATSSA is the American Traffic Safety Services Association

Ms. Bents: Thank you.

Mr. McClune: And they are located in Virginia and they are specifically focused as an organization on safety.

Ms. Bents: Thank you, I just wanted to make sure the record was correct. Sean, You look like you had something you wanted to say.

Mr. Maher: Yeah, a couple of things. Well, first I think there's a sense in the rider community that construction industry, those folks, that there is a general lack of awareness of motorcycle concerns and issues which are involved, as I already said. A couple of examples that I'll throw out there, several years ago AMA worked with Federal Highway on the issue of crack sealers, the asphalt sealers that you use to repair, alligator cracking, things like that. As a result of that we did a survey of members, collected a bunch of letters, came in and I can't remember who I met with, it might have been Dennis Souther(?) or it might have been Jermaine Jadicky(?) comes to mind anyhow, out of that, Federal Highway issued a memo and they distributed it to LCAPS the Local Technology Assistance folks, alerting them to the concerns about crack sealers and it gave some recommendations about how to go about putting it down. That's been probably about 10 years ago. Immediately on the heals of receiving that memo it was real helpful, I think, in raising awareness about that issue, so I think there's probably a number of other issues like that that we know are out there that we don't have to have the results from the study on crash causation to increase awareness in the industry, the construction industry about. One other thing that comes to mind though, I wish I had the example here, is I think the organization is Victoria Roads, out of Australia. They've put out a series of information pamphlets on the subject of road design, maintenance design and the target audience is the people who do the building of that and it's all about the motorcycle issues and things like that and that might be a good example to look to SWARS(?) designing something and the Federal Highway to put out to those folks.

Ms. Bents: O.K., great. Sean you mentioned one topic, the asphalt repair, and said there were probably lots of others similar to that that we could focus on. Do you have any suggestions about what some of those might be? Some topics we could take on this morning.

Mr. Maher: Some others, well, what others do we have? I think Steve mentioned the steel plates that go down when you're repaving a road; the differential in height between the newly laid asphalt and the old asphalt sometimes that can get to a few inches, maybe if that was doubled or a shorter distance between those comes to mind. Placement of signs in construction zones, particularly targeting motorcyclists might be helpful. There's probably others out there .

Ms. Bents: Go ahead, Rob.

Mr. McClune: One that is particularly important to me because I attended the 95^th Harley Davidson Anniversary several years ago and there were two or three traffic fatalities on the interstate just outside of the city and the two or three, I think it was three, were directly contributed to by road design and specifically the use of raised medians. At night, if you get to a junction or entrance ramp or certain parts, islands in the middle of the roadway, or channeling devices that take lanes into a certain direction, many times the DOTs use as a delineation device, a raised median, a curb and on this particular night there were two or three motorcycles on different occasions that hit those curbs because they just were not visible and raised medians can be very easily replaced with painted medians or other types of delineations and I see these raised medians used everywhere in the United States and as a motorcyclist, especially getting through highway or interstate areas within a heavily congested area, it's a problem.

Mr. Zimmer: Even if the raised medians were just painted with reflective materials

Mr. McClune: Yes, painted is fine and delineated.

Mr. Zimmer: Generally it's just a matter of notating that the hazard is there. Most of the time we can negotiate those things if we just know about them. But as Sean points out, signage that says "uneven pavement" means one thing but if it says "Motorcycle specific - uneven pavement" then that will draw your focus a little bit more so that you heighten that awareness to whatever fraction that may take so that you know as motorcyclists most of the time we can usually tell but at night, in the dark or if we have rainy conditions, weather conditions those are things that we need that extra little push, if you will, or awareness to bring it to our attention even more, heighten it, I guess you could say.

Ms. Bents: So what I really hear you saying is that certain types of maintenance practices and certain types of road design which can be an inconvenience to an automobile or truck driver or which may cause minor damage is really a major hazard to motorcyclists because you're so much more vulnerable and if I drive over a raised median, my husband's upset with me because I've damaged the car but if I were to go over it on a motorcycle certainly the consequences would be much more severe.

Mr. Zimmer: These things exist everywhere. There's, I don't know if it's still in use anymore, but there was a bridge that ran over the Missouri River in Ludenville(?), Missouri if you ever cross that bridge you'll know what I'm talking about. It was put in upside-down, it was a grated bridge and it was all grating. On a car it's O.K. On a motorcycle, it's impassable. My wife actually refused to go over it. She said I'm not going that way. I'll get off the other side and I'll walk because she refused to go over. It was one of those things where there was no signage. There was nothing that let you know that it was more hazardous on a motorcycle.

Mr. Salontai: There's actually one like that going into Flint, Michigan. We were coming out of Canada four years ago and you're riding and it was a challenge to get over that bridge. There was no signage, no indication in fact.

Mr. Zimmer: I'm curious, what is the surface of that road?

Mr. Salontai: It's a steel grating and the grates are parallel to the traffic which is difficult on a motorcycle. You know there are dozens and dozens of examples. Do you have any information about ridership because I think this problem is going to get larger. I think ridership, my personal observation, is way up on motorcycles and you know if there was some data that backed that fact, I think that back to this getting the attention of you folks in the decision making process, including DOTs and Federal Highway Administration, showing that the future studies show that ridership is going to be two or threefold and I think with the cost of fuel I think we're going to see that and that would help support this. This is more commentary than - it helps support the mission here besides it being a charter of SAFTEA-LU, I think it would help support it. This is a big issue.

Mr. Halladay: The answer is "yes", we do have those statistics, there have been some observations in the vehicle travel data, particularly for motorcycles could be better and there are figures out there but the fact that it is, the use is growing is something Mary referred to, NHTSA is the holder of most of those statistics and fact sheets that they do on motorcycle safety and travel are the background for all of that so, yes, those figures are there and that's the kind of thing that's been driving a lot of the attention

Mr. Salontai: A lot of the solutions are fairly simple and are not, you know, most of the problems and issues are related to construction and maintenance more so than the pure design aspect of things. You know bridge abutments and abutments settle, they are designed to settle and you have a transition there with a bridge structure and you know in a car you get a boom-boom, on a motorcycle you can get much worse so it could be some simple construction related or follow on maintenance issues that heighten the awareness of that and brings that to remedy faster. The steel plating, you could potentially put an abrasive material on top of the steel, you know, and that could solve a lot of that issue. So on and on and on, you know, shoulder backing, insufficient widths on shoulders, on paved shoulders, those are all issues that could be easily solved.

Ms. Bents: Would it be helpful to the group if we just sort of tackled a topical area like design and went through and did some brainstorming on specific instances of roadway design, highway design that would be of particular concern to motorcyclists and to define those as carefully as we can.

Mr. Salontai: Yeah, you could almost break it into ITS, design, construction and maintenance and hit each one of those and it might be, might get us to focus. I like that idea.

Ms. Bents: Group? It's your meeting. Would that be helpful to you?

Group: Yeah.

Ms. Bents: O.K. shall we start with design then, roadway design issues? We heard about the raised barriers, and as I understand it one of the issues there is, if you're going to have raised barriers and they may or may not be necessary, perhaps, as some sort of painted delineation would do but if you have them, highlight them so that they are more visible to all motorists and especially to motorcyclists. Is there anything else?

Mr. McClune: I think it's, the issue that I pointed out, the raised median, there's two issues. Raised medians and guard rails, that's two separate issues, and with raised medians, which is really, for those of you not involved in the industry, it's pretty much a curb.

Ms. Bents: Right.

Mr. McClune: Where the median itself is raised up so either those be delineated somehow, with some sort of retro-reflectivity and then the guard rail issue I think has to do with, I think, just the issue that I don't think it's ever been looked at as to the impact of guardrails as they are designed today and how they impact the motorcyclist. I daresay, there are a lot of deaths that have been the result of guard rails.

Ms. Bents: O.K. before we move on to guard rails, anything else about the median barriers?

Mr. Bloschock: Not median barriers, raised medians.

Ms. Bents: Raised medians, I'll get this right.

Mr. Bloschock: Raised medians from an owner's perspective are kind of a positive channelizing delineation device, if we painted it we know folks would drive right over it. So the raised median serves a number of purposes to channelize traffic and make sure you don't have left turns, so you don't have those left turn type accidents and as a pedestrian refuge. But there are ways, I agree, that we could make those appear, not just to motorcyclists but also to cars so at TEXDOT we tried to develop a paint that we could get more reflectivity out of and I tried to get some folks excited about that, maybe this is a good forum to talk about it a little bit but a paint that would have some reflectivity that maybe would not get dirty quite as quickly and where we've done it in the parking lot, you know, where you pull in, in the evenings, and the lights hit it, definitely you can see the curb and that's really what you're looking for. Painting it yellow just doesn't work, you have to get some retro-reflectivity in it. If you paint if yellow it just gets dirty. With the sandblasting beads in it, we were able to get a little bit more reflectivity back and I hope that it would stay that way for awhile. Our tests panels are in a parking lot, however, but we would look for the private industry folks, and I'm on AASHTO Task Force 13 and you would look at it from AATSAs standpoint and get the vendors to get excited about doing some of that, it would be a really good place for the vendors to be.

Ms. Bents: Marketing opportunities, this is good.

Mr. McClune: When I first started I said that my area is really the highway/roadway delineation and pavement markings and the pavement marking issue, the delineation issue is really an issue for all aspects of highway safety and there's more and more emphasis being placed today. I think that Federal Highways is still grappling with establishing a minimum level of reflectivity for markings on our roadway, which will really raise the bar and there's issues with it being an unfunded mandate and total liability issues and all that stuff but for the motorcyclist it's even more important, and I almost hate to say this, but I almost categorize the motorcyclist in the same category as the older driver. The older driver requires three and four times as much light to be able to see at the same level that they were able to see at night when they were in their twenties. Motorcyclists, although they're not necessarily suffering from age they, being able to see the roadway, being able to see the markings, being able to have the proper delineation and guidances is critical and most of that is dealt with a lot with retro-reflectivity. There are issues, today before Federal Highway, as a matter of fact, in the safety bill there are provisions for why there are edge lines and why the edge lines are critical for the older driver and also for the motorcyclist because it gives you more sight distance as you look down the road, while they start out wider, you can see them a little bit longer so that becomes an important part of getting that motorcycle home safely at night.

Ms. Bents: Does motorcyclist eyewear also play a factor here? Wearing goggles, visors, whatever for visibility in the daytime or even in the nighttime, with various infrastructures? Is that a complicating factor?

Mr. McClune: Well, I "˜m not sure I'm qualified to answer that but the, I know that I wear, I know it's critical for eye safety. I think that motorcyclists have a tendency to wear darker glasses or goggles and I think that decreases the amount of retro-reflectivity that they're able to observe, so that may impact how well they're able to see.

Ms. Bents: And do you wear the same dark goggles when riding at night?

Mr. McClune: No, you shouldn't. But I think folks have a tendency to wear darker glasses.

Ms. Bents: So that's something else that perhaps is a factor that might be considered for things like retro-reflectivity.

Mr. McClune: Pavement markings or signage, I think is critical. One, I think someone brought this up, and I promise to be quiet in a second, being in the pavement marking industry if you take a look at other parts of the world, I'm not suggesting that we do this in North America, but they add, typically as a standard practice, they add skid resistance to the pavement markings themselves. In Europe and other parts of the world, they do this more for the bicyclists. I'm not aware of any major issue with motorcycles for horizontal pavement markings being slippery. I am aware of intersections or the stop bars when you get to intersections, those without skid resistance, and they do not have skid resistance today as a typical practice. If we were to consider any form of skid resistance, I would consider it at the intersection or at the stop bars but not at on what we'll call longitudinal or horizontal pavement markings. I say that because there's a conflict if you add skid resistance to your pavement markings your decrease the level of retro-reflectivity so I think you're opposing systems.

Ms. Bents: Oh, nothing's ever easy. Jeff.

Mr. Hennie: Just to add while we're talking about surface markings, I think, you know, certainly on the list that we'll also need to address the thermo-plastic pavement markings, decorative stone markings that behave differently under different weather conditions, you know, and another way with the revitalization of downtown America a lot of cross walks are now being paved with decorative stone or patio block that is different than an asphalt or concrete material when it's wet providing for dangerous and slippery situation for any two wheeled vehicle. So I think that's something that is direct, you know barriers, that happens after you leave the road and that's definitely something we need to talk some more about. I think the pavement markings being slippery is a level 1 problem because you don't have to leave the road to come in contact with it. You can simply be a part of traffic and be subject to it. So I think that's something where we can, you know someone said low hanging fruit earlier, that's something we can really, I think, address immediately with some pretty simple solutions.

Ms. Bents: Now for the pavement issues that you talked about, Mark, were they made of block or stone or something different than the other roadway surface, is that done strictly for decorative purposes or is there a pedestrian component in there?

Mr. Hennie: I think it's a fancy way to mark a sidewalk or mark a crosswalk instead of the white thermoplastic, paint or the white generic markings, you know they try to make it look pleasing to the eye or for whatever reason.

Mr. Bloschock: You know it may have something to do with ADA, too, with blind people.

Ms. Bents: Blind people, that's who I was thinking about because I'm aware of some work where they are trying to make changes in surface of sidewalks, for instance, you know, where there is a ramp for blind people to go down so that they are aware that they're at the edge of the sidewalk, entering roads. I wondered if that was part of it but I had no clue so, I'm glad we have experts here.

Mr. Hennie: Well, you know as Mary said, in order to stay healthy you're suppose to take 10,000 steps per day. I think you're going to get them today.

(Laughter)

Ms. Bents: I hope. (laughter) I could use it.

Mr. Hennie: Just real quick, I'm going to tell a personal story. It was about a year ago that the stop bar thermoplastic and it was dry and I hit that, I've got 100,000 miles or more on a motorcycle and I was down so quick I got up before I knew I was down because the motorcycle kept on going and as I investigated the thermoplastic and you know you go over there and fortunately when I turned left it was on a narrow so there was nobody coming my way. I'd never really thought about it much and as you went and put your bare hand on that layer of thermoplastic it was slick as glass and I see Steve noticing that and so when I went back to the folks who taught the MSF class over at the Harley Dealership and you know we've talked a lot about safety and I mentioned that and they said, "Oh, no we always mention paints in our class. You didn't mention it in mine and I think that is something that they didn't bring into account, that the stop bar, of course, is most critical because of the way it's looking at you 18 inches but the bike was down so fast that I had never experienced anything like that. It was amazing, I was wearing leather and stuff so nothing really happened but the bike took a while to get back in shape.

Mr. McClune: That's a very, very simple fix and very inexpensive fix, as well. When intersections are, when pavement markings are placed in two categories, there are durables and non-durables. The durables are those types of markings that last, let's say, in excess of two or three years. Thermoplastic happens to be one of those. And in effect, again for those of you who are not familiar with it, it is literally melted plastic that goes down and looks like paint in that paint they put glass beads to provide retro-reflectivity then they very easily, when they put the beads in, they could put a skid resistant material in the thermoplastic, and again, it's at the intersection where, I think, at least in my experience as well, that's where I've gone down twice in my life on motorcycles and one of them was at an intersection on a slippery cross section.

Mr. Hennie: That was my experience, it was very slick when I've talked to the TEXDOT area engineer who is in charge of that particular intersection by my house he was really surprised and again it comes down to awareness because he says he was on some national panel on thermoplastic and they were very proud that these markings could last 5-7 years in applications like that and this, I helped to build that bridge back in the 70's as an inspector, so the bridge has been there for awhile well the build up of thermoplastic was probably over a quarter inch, I'd say, we put different layers on so it was very slick. But it was interesting to note the lack awareness from the folks who were very proud of its durability aspect, they really weren't into the skid resistance aspects of it.

Mr. McClune: I'd like, on that issue, to make sure that everybody's clear on my point. I'm not professing and I think it could cause concern in the industry if we were talking about skid resistance for all pavement markings. We're just talking here about the intersection stop bar where motorcycles coming into a stop and many times on a wet road applying the brakes and whoosh, the bike goes out from under you.

Mr. Hennie: Or taking a turn, or railroad crossing, anywhere there are a lot of markings. Intersections, turn arrows

Mr. Bloschock: The turn arrows in Texas, I don't know about every place else, they're huge, they're like acres of thermoplastic

Ms. Bents: Oh, everything in Texas is big, we know, Mark.

Mr. Bloschock: And I'll tell you what. I avoid those arrows now, even if I'm going straight.

Ms. Van Kleeck: Has thermoplastic overtaken paint completely?

Mr. McClune: The most widely used marking material is waterborne paint, except at intersections. And it's a nondurable because it's relatively inexpensive. Thermoplastic is the largest used durable in the United States and growing and worldwide as well, which is, there's another point we may want to think about and actually this comes from Mike Crow the director of operations at K Dot. It's pretty well known that I think the Europeans are ahead of us on these issues because there's much more bicycle traffic in Europe and much more motorcycle traffic and usage in Europe and growing. A point that I may make is that we may want to look to the Europeans for additional information and guidance on some of these issues because I think they've already grappled with many of the concerns we have here today.

Ms. Bents: With regard to the thermoplastic, did I hear Mark say it is both an original design issue as to where you use it and how slick it might be and also a maintenance issue that there are multiple layers that get built up and that makes problems worse?

Mr. Bloschock: I think that's been my experience, but it's fairly limited by just my studies of that particular intersection but I do notice it now when I go into other intersections. But it's original design in intersections for durability and then also maintenance.

Ms. Bents: Thank you. Steve.

Mr. Zimmer: As we are talking about the lane markings and describing one of the concerns I have and this is kind of a personal thing but as I get older, I find that when I'm traveling in wet weather all those lines just absolutely disappear. And not just on a motorcycle but in cars as well. And I don't know if there's, this is kind of a question, is there a way we can add reflectivity that will stand up in wet weather that will allow us to see it much better because on a motorcycle, when you're riding in the rain, you have several issues you have to deal with all at one time and visibility is a big one. I ride a touring model and it has a windshield and I have to deal with the water on the windshield as a car driver would but I also have to deal with it on my glasses, and so, it starts to compound more and more as the harder the rain is so reflectivity and the street markings and the lane markings become doubly important that one time to avoid drive offs, leaving the roadside.

Ms. Bents: O.K. let me ask the question, here, since you all know I know nothing about these kinds of things but the reflectivity, is that by federal standard, by AASHTO recommendation, is it a state issue, is it industry comes up with various types and then sells the best they can to the states, I mean who determines that? Where should this recommendation for increased reflectivity be placed?

Mr. McClune: There is a federal mandate that pavement markings and signage provide retro-reflectivity. If they, the Federal Government, Federal Highway are wrestling with, as I said before, minimum levels of retro-reflectivity. Industry believes it should be very high, Federal Highway believes it should be reasonable, and the state DOT say it has to get funded somehow. And if you think about that equation it becomes a very difficult scenario. But to answer your specific question, all pavement markings in North America must provide retro-reflectivity and there is a device in that line that causes reflectivity, it's a glass bead. And there are types of systems that do work on a wet night. The problem is they are substantially more expensive than the standard retro-reflective systems that are used in pavement markings. You will see some of these wet night systems in various parts of the country. For example, the state of Kansas, all their roadways are wet night reflective being glass beads, using a bead that is specifically designed to work wet night. And Texas as well is using a substantial amount of that product.

Mr. Zimmer: Just real quickly because I don't know the answer to this, is that double the cost of the paint striped because of the glass? Glass beads are expensive because of the sandblaster, I know.

Mr. Halladay: It doesn't double the cost it probably increases the cost anywhere between 10 and 15 % of the cost of one that is painted.

Ms. Bents: O.K., Steve.

Mr. Zimmer: Is there a standard that says how often they have to be repainted or just whenever you get around to it or I guess, maybe that is part of the issue, in that, normal wear and tear takes some of the reflectivity away from it and even though it's a visible yellow stripe, or white stripe whatever the case may be, it doesn't have that reflectivity any longer and it's a maintenance issue as opposed to the product itself, the actual materials.

Ms. Bents: Snow plows in Ohio?

Mr. Halladay: As Bob says it does get complex in terms of cost, maintainability, recent construction and so forth and we are grappling with that. Mary, you wanted to say a few words.

Ms. McDonough: Well, we actually have a Federal Register notice out on nighttime visibility and it closes on, I think, November 6, and we are struggling as Steve said, as Bob said, I'm sorry, we are struggling with this we have exactly those problems. We want to be reasonable, we want to say to the states, we're going to stagger this over time, we're going to give you time to implement it, you probably know about as much about it as I do, and they do, in fact, say things like, " We can't afford it." Retro-reflectivity, on say a traffic sign will deteriorate over time and we have allowed the states to have, what we're requiring right now is a process that says how are you going to examine what you have and know that it's good? And sometimes you'll go out during the day, and you can't see it in the daytime, you don't have the same opportunity as you have at night, there are more visual cues during the day so the best way would be to go at night and examine it. So we do have that notice out right now and it closes, I believe, I think it's November 6th, I don't have it, if you really want I can phone back to the office and get it or we can have Fran send it out.

Mr. McClune: I was going to say it's actually a supplemental notice but it only applies to signs, sign retro-reflectivity, we intend to address the pavement marking issue after we see where we finally come down on the sign issue but the pavement marking issue becomes, it's much more complicated. We can predict what will happen with the reflectivity of the sign over time. Pavement markings, depending on where they're located and one snow plow pass can take care of a big chunk of reflectivity and they set a pavement standard and it's just much harder to predict and over time what will happen with that. So that's going to a more complicated issue. The signs will happen first. Pavement markings really affect the motorcyclist. The, to come back to your question, when do they replace, how bright should they be, pavement markings are not federally funded, typically. Only pavement markings that are applied on construction projects are federally funded. The majority of pavement markings in the United States are a maintenance function which means it must come from the state coffers. That money comes from the gasoline tax. So in specific answer to your question, if the state can afford to paint those lines every year, they will. If they can't afford it they let it go longer then they probably should.

Ms. Bents: Gerry, I know you have something, go ahead.

Mr. Salontai: Did I understand correctly, there is no standard relative to providing skid resistive abrasive material in thermoplastic markings, at this time?

Mr. McClune: Not that I'm aware of.

Mr. Salontai: So maybe that's an opportunity area as we, as part of this group, because that starts at construction, which is federally funded and maybe that's the place to start.

Mr. Bloschock: From the state DOT perspective we appreciate the federal funding because you always ask the question, if you were to build the house and it was for an 80% of sale how would you build it knowing you had to maintain it with 100% your own money. So, not that we want to overspend federal money but we definitely want to get out there on new construction and really get something down that is very durable and really going to do the job for a long time because maintenance is a huge issue and that's where , in Texas currently, that is where all our gas tax goes to. We do a billion dollars worth of maintenance annually and that's where every cent of the gas tax goes to.

Mr. McClune: Also, I think if you integrate it into construction I think you will see more readily adoption, adopting the same type of methods and practices and materials may come along more readily, especially if you see, because the states collect traffic and accident data and if they see that there's been changes in that I think there will be pressure and opportunity to look at that more into the maintenance area.

Mr. Salontai: Exactly, you're leading by example with new construction and then that is by default it would go right into maintenance.

Ms. Bents: Are there more comments on pavement markings? Well I think we almost have the seeds of a recommendation here regarding use of various materials, retro-reflectivity and maintenance. Would someone like to suggest some language for a recommendation?

Mr. Salontai: I think you have two. You have the skid resistant material and you have the retro-reflectivity. There's two opportunities, I think.

Ms. Bents: And group, are you in agreement that this is an issue and that the recommendations you'd like to make for increased attention or how would you like to phrase it?

Mr. McClune: How would the proposal come in the form of a recommendation to Federal Highway or recommendation to the Department of Transportation? On the skid resistance it could be we recommend that there be an investigation of the impact of adding skid resistance to intersection pavement marking materials.

Ms. Bents: The Council's recommendations as Mike said will be made to the Federal Highway Administration. Where they go from there is a matter of process.

Mr. McClune: Well, I can tell you, these things with AASHTO, I mean there's going to have to be some work done, there's going to have to be a study or a test or testing or something so the recommendation, I think, would have to go from Federal Highways to AASHTO to recommend they investigate the impact on skid resistant materials in intersections as they pertain to motorcycle safety. Something along those lines.

Mr. Halladay: I think the identification of the issues is an important first step and then the process, the collection of information, who gets involved, how it goes forward either in a specification or construction specification that is adopted, that is recognized by AASHTO and adopted by the individual states. There are various processes there and I guess I would suggest to this group that flexibility, not getting into how that process really would operate. But identification of the issue and the strength of that issue, the priority of that point for the motorcycle community and then the response is something that yes, we would take to Federal Highway/US DOT and then who we work with, we do have representatives from AASHTO, members that are well versed as to how those things work and really we can partner with them on next steps. So I guess what I'm suggesting, and again this is new to us, but the identification of the issue coming from the members is an important first step but perhaps not getting into how this investigation needs to happen, the next step needs to happen and so forth would probably be preferable .

Mr. Salontai: So the issue is pavement markings at intersections, in particular those with thermoplastic materials, are significant contributor to motorcycle accidents in those locations and we believe that steps need to be taken to integrate skid resistant materials in the design and construction of those pavement markers.

Mr. McClune: And Federal Highway will just take it from there? Is that what you're looking for? That's a mouthful.

Mr. Salontai: I would second that one.

(Laughter)

Mr. McClune: The issue obviously is skid resistance at intersections but we can't limit it to thermoplastic because they use other forms of material, they use methamethacolade(?), epoxies, polyesters, polyeurias, all types, all pavement markings.

Mr. Bloschock: And Bob what you were looking for was something in Texas on pavement we call polished value. So how well it performs over time and that polished value, if it has a lot of skid resistance on day one when you open that intersection, that's great. But on day 365 if it's slick as glass it's not good so it almost has to be some language about durability, even though really paint durability by somebody else, it's skid resistance durability.

Mr. Zimmer: Mike's point, which I think is good to keep in mind as you talk today and beyond today, is that I would frame your recommendations as to what you would like to see happen and not worry so much about "who" and "how". We'll figure that out if there's something that we don't have complete control over we'll have to figure out how to do that.

Mr. McClune: So identify the issue and what you think ought to happen.

Mr. Bloschock: In Texas we call that "flying over it at 5,000 feet", kind of global, stay up high.

Mr. Zimmer: I was just going to suggest that perhaps we could utilize a system similar to NAMS where we have urgent recommendations that we feel need to be addressed more immediately than others. I mean some things they need to be addressed, but not now. Whereas, there are issues we're going to probably discuss that probably are going to have to have some attention done more immediately and using the NAMS profile, if you will, might be a way to do it too.

Mr. Halladay: Well, I think Don kind of touched on that point, knowing more, if we had the data from the crash causation study, for example, scientifically based, where you go first, now that won't happen for "X" number of years realistically, but going after what you know are issues and what you'd like to see happen because they are priorities sounds good.

Ms. Bents: Thank you, Steve, that's exactly where I was going. Sean.

Mr. Maher: I just want to take the opportunity to bring up awareness again using Mark's example of sliding on the pavement marking. A couple of things, first, I think you indicated you weren't aware that they would be that slippery when you hit it. You know, I think for me, I just because of my experience, I know that they are slippery and I guess I'm surprised that other riders wouldn't know that but now I'm thinking well there's probably a number of new riders coming back in that, you know, fifteen or twenty years ago these adhesive pavement markings probably weren't used at all. So, you've got an awareness gap on the rider end of things and I think you also mentioned that some of the engineering folks you spoke with weren't aware that that kind of pavement marking would create a problem for riders. So you've got lack of awareness on the riders part, lack of awareness again, on the engineers part and I think, again I think, that a number of these issues could be brought together and put out in an effort to increase awareness in those respective parties.

Ms. Bents: Thanks Sean, I know there were some comments earlier today about who makes up the ridership? Is it increasing and so forth? And as Mike mentioned yes, ridership is up, vehicle miles traveled are up, there is a very large group of baby boomers, my generation, who rode when we were a bit younger and who have returned to motorcycling, some have ridden continuously but there is a very large group who are coming back now, having zipped around on a little Honda 90 and now they're purchasing Gold Wings and big Harley's and so forth and they don't quite have the skills that they thought they might have. They're dealing with much larger vehicles and the fatality rate for this group in particular, the forty and over is just climbing very, very rapidly and so as you say, if there are differences in equipment, differences in personal capabilities, they may or may not have taken a safety class before resuming riding and you have a different roadway infrastructure and different traffic. So there are a lot of challenges here for that group and that is a group of particular concern among safety professionals.

Mr. Bloschock: Sean, I think you made a really good point. I'm one of those that rode a lot while I was younger and then raised the kid and came back to it and you're right, thermoplastic wasn't back then and back then I never did really give much thought to pavement markings. By the way, I'll borrow a book title, but what it's called, and I know everyone in this room knows it, but it's my syndrome, along with a lot of other folks, it's called Empty Nest, Full Throttle. Get them out of the house so you can go out and do something else.

Mr. Maher: Just one more comment, again why I'm stuck on the awareness part is because I think we'll identify a number of these issues but I think on the short to mid-term don't realistically see engineers scrambling out to scrub off the paint and pull up the adhesives and throw down new reflective and skid resistant adhesives and I just don't see that happening in the next five to ten years whereas, I see the awareness initiatives could happen and I think that could be in the short to mid-term.

Mr. Bloschock: Well, let's say, just real quickly, our colleague from South Dakota area has seen a tremendous amount of motorcycle traffic like around Sturgis and in South Florida and in Southern California, they may run out there a little bit quicker with skid resistant things, the rest of the country, you're right, might follow a little bit slower, but I think the high motorcycle traffic areas might respond.

Ms. Bents: Gerry.

Mr. Salontai: Did I get this correct, our scope or our charter is actually to look at the design and those elements and the awareness that goes along with that and not to focus on the awareness of the riders, I mean, I understand Federal Highway's role.

Ms. Bents: Educational programs are NHTSA programs primarily.

Mr. Salontai: There are needs too, for education, but we're talking about things we can recommend and they might, I agree with you, they may get implemented faster than we give them credit for. I think we could see some serious change over the next couple of years; three months, no; three years possibly.

Ms. Bents: It's part of the mission of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to look at things like rider education programs and training.

Mr. Salontai: The pamphlet that Bob held up earlier, that is an awareness tool, but that is an awareness for state DOT, municipal DOT, engineers, I think that kind of awareness is on the table with this group.

Mr. Halladay: Yes, right

Mr. Salontai: Educating riders in general, probably is not what this group was intended for.

Mr. Halladay: Agreed, maybe I didn't articulate it that way, but you're right. Educating the designers, the constructors, the people who provide maintenance probably is in the purview of this group.

Mr. Bloschock: I think there's a companion pamphlet, for trees which your office turned out which has been really helpful over at TEXDOT, we deal with this issue all the time. There's also a CD, a little CD movie and it's just awareness going to designers, especially a lot of the designers are, well, I'm getting older but they're looking younger, so it gets them some information quicker than maybe we got it when we were coming up inside the ranks.

Mr. Halladay: Maybe that's a recommendation, actually, is that we put together, that we recommend that we put together or that FHWA puts together an awareness of what design issues do affect the design, construction, maintenance issues.

Mr. Salontai: I found a pamphlet like that, like the one that I was holding to be quite helpful

Mr. Halladay: Published, produced and given to all the DOTs in the nation and that will dribble down into the local municipalities from there.

Mr. Salontai: I was going to ask from the DOT, would that be well received? For example, a Design to Ride type of brochure?

Mr. Bloschock: Well, I mean from the standpoint of myself with TEXDOT, you know, the next time that I'm invited to speak at one of our commission meetings, or executive director type meetings, I walk in with my helmet and a handful of brochures. You know, thirty seconds, you know, just a real snippet of information, you know, those folks out in the audience, they pick that up very quickly.

Mr. McClune: One thing to know about this, and again I guess the question I have is what sort of, I don't want to use the word "power" but what sorts of controls does this committee have over our destiny. In this particular pamphlet it says, "the manual on uniform control devices, the MUTCD, which is the national standard used for all roads open to public travel. It states that roadside signs supports in the clear zone shall be, "shall" that was the breakthrough, the word shall. In the MUTCD now it says, the signs shall be, not may be or should be, which is the wording that they use in these manuals so my point is if we believe firmly that skid resistance in the intersection is important, yes we can work on individual DOTs, we could have pamphlets, but if we had the AASHTO committee put in the MUTCD that intersections shall have skid resistance the next day that becomes law on all roadways.

Mr. Halladay: Yes the MUTCD is actually, and I'm not the best spokesman for this, and it's not just AASHTO there's a national committee that deliberates and ends up balloting on changes. Federal Highway Administration or our sister office in operations has the lead for staffing that function and as Jeff says identifying that as an issue and saying, "here's what we'd like to see happen" and then how we might work on those types of awareness brochures for designers and if there's another path that it can go forward to MUTCD consideration and there is a formal process that we can see about that too.

Mr. Lindley: I mean I do think, I mean you asked, you said you weren't sure about what the kind of boundaries of this group were and it might be useful to think about your recommendations in terms of some different kinds of things. There's some outreach things, there's some technical values things. But policy changes, regulatory changes and legislative changes are certainly on the table if you care to make those recommendations. Those may take longer to implement and, depending on what you recommend, some may be impossible to implement but they're certainly on the table as far as what you can choose to recommend back to the department.

Ms. Bents: O.K. so I think we had a good discussion and recommendation regarding the skid resistance at intersections but I think we might have slipped a little bit on the retro-reflectivity, if that's something that the committee feels is important, high priority, scale of 1-5, do we have a suggestion, a motion?

Mr. Lindley: Did you say emotion or motion? I might comment on that, as well. There is already movement afoot within Federal Highways and under the SAFETEA-LU program and I didn't bring copies with me but there are provisions for improvement in retro-reflectivity and I also believe they addressed the wider lines issue and a recommendation that I might make is that the motorcycle committee strongly supports those initiatives as a safety device as it impacts the motorcycle driver. In other words what I'm saying is that the work is being done, I'm suggesting if this committee believes that retro-reflectivity is important that the committee somehow sends a message forward that...

Ms. Bents: Endorses that?

Mr. Lindley: Endorses that as an added safety device for the American Motorcyclist Association.

Mr. Halladay: Plus a repetitive message from this group doesn't hurt.

Ms. Bents: Council, what do you think? Is this something you'd like to do?

Mr. Halladay: And you may want to add your issues of wet night. You may want to add brighter and those are all in the legislation and there's some funding for that now.

Ms. Bents: Mary:

Ms. McDonough: As Jeff mentioned we're working on pavement markings a little later. One of the reasons I mention the fact that we have a Federal Register Notice out now is because if there are people who want to make comments about retro-reflectivity, you can make any kind of comments you want to the docket and signs do affect different users of the road differently. You know, it looks different in a sports car than an SUV or a large truck, so, if you're on a motorcycle how you see that sign, you know that Bob, is different depending on where you are with it. So, if you have an opportunity now, it's open until November 6.

Mr. Lindley: Do you have a docket number on that?

Ms. McDonough: I'll call back to the office at noon and get it . And the other thing I want to know is if you want copies of, we have lots of extra copies of the break road brochure and the DVDs on trees, the delicate balance between trees. I can bring some over. I'll call at noon and we'll get enough copies for everybody. Then if you need more you can just call us but anyway that's why I wanted to mention the fact that we have action on signing but, you know, nighttime visibility is an issue. I gave a presentation at APWA and part of the message I got back was "well when are you going to issue something?" And these were local folks, whereas the states often fight with us about the unfunded mandate thing.

Mr. ?: So we don't forget it as well, Donald mentioned something that's also very important to me as a rider it's the milled surfaces and I don't want to get beyond that but that should be on our list. I was on the Massachusetts Turnpike at 60 mph and without a warning hit a milled surfaced and I can tell you I was all over the road and nearly was run over, Just because I couldn't hold my lane and it's an issue that the DOTs I don't think are aware of . It's an issue that the driving public is not aware of but unless you've done that on a motorcycle, it's a problem. I mean I think there needs to be some kind of warning. I mean I just don't think they can rip up the road in front of us and not tell us they're going to rip up the road.

Mr. Halladay: We're going to cover that when we get to signage.

Ms. Bents: Just, because I do want to go there, I think we have recommendations that we have made. One was about skid resistance and intersection markings and the second was the retro-reflectivity and wider lines and endorsing that. On a scale of 1 - 5, 5 being the most important, how would you as a council rate these in importance? Kathy?

Ms. Van Kleeck: I don't know if this would be helpful but when we were developing the NAMs it seemed to be a useful technique that rather than taking each individual recommendation and prioritizing it, to look at it in the scheme of hopefully a lot of recommendations that we'll be coming up with and then it's easier, maybe in the end, maybe prioritize and say oh, maybe we think this one's a more important one.

Ms. Bents: O.K., we could go that way.

Mr. Zimmer: I would say they're both 5s right now.

Ms. Bents: Alright, great. Are you all happy with that? Very good, O.K. so we have been talking about pavement markings and traffic control, on surface, not traffic control devices. Is there anything else in that genre that you'd like to talk about or can we move on to some maintenance issues such as milled surfaces, which gets into signing and warning about maintenance practices? Are we ready to move on?

Ms. Van Kleeck: Unless we wanted to go back and address the grooves and the grates that we were talking about that, I think, is more of a design issue, as far as making sure that when you're building them they're perpendicular rather than parallel and those sorts of things, it used to be a design issue.

Mr. Zimmer: Rain grooves and jointing, Maryland did something here, it's been seven or eight years ago, I think, they had a campaign to go out and identify the expansion joints on overpasses that were a serious issue and they pushed to get signage up specifically for motorcycles to warn them of the expansion joints. I don't have anything that reinforces this but I think it helped, I don't know, I don't know of any statistics that have been gathered that way but I know the motorcyclists were happy, the ones that I talked to in Maryland they were quite pleased with the fact that now they had some forewarning and all it took was a yellow triangle sign up there. So again, the expansion joints and milling, rain grooves, those are design issues that have to be looked at.

Ms. Bents: O.K. I think we're mixing two things here and one is the fact that you have these expansion joints and I don't know if there's more than one way of doing that or the use of metal plates and the other is the signage notifying motorcyclists and motorists about the presence of such things so are those two separate issues, is it all one?

Ms. Van Kleeck: I guess one fell into design, where you were actually building them, I thought, to again don't make the grates parallel, make them perpendicular to the lane of travel that sort of thing and what Steve was talking about, I think, isn't an issue under design, if we're going to get to a signage section.

Mr. Zimmer: Yeah, it's kind of hard to separate them out because it's a design issue. You design the roadways to do what they have to do. Expansion joints are a necessary evil but as you design them and put them together, consider the fact and the impact to motorcycling, and again it goes back to that awareness, as we design, I mean it really comes back to that a lot. That we can't be forgotten in the mix which seems to happen quite regularly and the expansion joints are just one issue where, in the design, motorcycles were forgotten. They're necessary for the bridge, we can understand that, then comes the signage. Well we've got this issue, how are we going to deal with it. Well let's let them know about it for sure. They are separate but they're tied together.

Mr. Bloschock: Awareness to designers is really a big issue and let me give you an example, it's really not a very good data point but in our office, let's say there are 100 designers and engineers, and people who go into engineering have a certain sort of mind, you know, you're smiling, and you know you can figure out how many motorcyclists there are in the office, there's probably more pilots and so when you're looking at what might be perceived by society as risky behavior, engineers are not going to be represented that much so 98 of those 100 engineers are not motorcyclists so that it's all about awareness at the design level.

Mr. Zimmer: And getting those 100 engineers to talk to each other about it too, within the department.

Mr. Bloschock: All you've got to do is bring free donuts.

(laughter)

Mr. Zimmer: Well, there's a solution, there we go.

Ms. Bents: More donuts

Mr. Zimmer: We're talking expansion joints and bridges, structures?

Mr. Bloschock: As he's saying as a necessary evil in the bump, the bounce.

Mr. Zimmer: And the other one is the approach abutment, you know there is, most of my riding is in the West. The settlement that occurs at the abutment which I guess goes into design and maintenance. The bridge is built, it's fine for the first six months, settlement continues to occur at the abutment, now all of a sudden you have a pretty stiff bump and in some cases it's an inch or more and you hit that at sixty or sixty five mph and that's pretty significant on a bike.

Mr. Bloschock: Especially if you have a Sportster, it can really hit you pretty hard. I'm a bridge designer that's really what I do most of the time and so it's inevitable that that settlement is occurring.

Mr. Halladay: Yeah, it's inevitable, however, is there a possibility to carry that on, carry, I don't know if it's awareness or in the design, to carry it on into maintenance, I guess.

Mr. Bloschock: If we fly over it 5000 feet than I think it's good to bring a recommendation up that has some things, a number of things and expansion joints or the bump at the end of the bridge as we call it is one that should come forward in the council and not what to do with it just an awareness thing because when you look at the maintenance guys, the maintenance guys are looking at it from the standpoint of cars and trucks. If you bring up the awareness of motorcycles, they'll go "oh" just like the area engineer that said "oh, thermoplastic needs skid resistance, I never thought about that." It's just a matter of just bringing that up

Mr. Halladay: And it might be a simple matter of instead of letting the maintenance occur when there's an inch and a half differential, you do it at half an inch or something like that.

Mr. Bloschock: Or just bringing up the awareness that it's an issue, that it's an issue for motorcyclists is probably good, you wouldn't want to establish any rules.

Mr. Zimmer: The same thing happens at railroad crossings.

Mr. Bloschock: A huge amount of money is spent in Texas on railroad crossings for the reasons that you're talking about, to smooth them out.

Mr. McClune: The other issue is actually joints parallel to the highway, paving lane joints, on concrete highway, that's pretty significant, especially in southern California and especially since the paving lane joints traverse often times the lane of travel, they start out, I believe, but not always in design, they don't always start out in design, actually with the intention of having that lane, that joint occur at the lane markings, and they often times are traversing across and often times concrete to asphalt because anyone who has ridden a bike or taken a safety course you want to cross those joints perpendicular and you're out there going back and forth trying to get an angle at them, and if you've been caught in one that's got some separation it can be quite dangerous. So the joints not being aligned with the lane markings, the joints traversing the lane of traffic.

Mr. Zimmer: Along that same line, in South Dakota, particularly during the Sturgis rally when they build these temporary cross-over lanes, they're also over there doing maintenance on one side of the interstate or the other and so we have often found that the transition from the concrete to the asphalt leaves a ridge and of course there's no way you can hit that perpendicular, you're always going to hit that at an angle and we have had some fatalities in South Dakota as a result of that.

Ms. Bents: So I hear what, to me, is sort of a general category of uneven payment surfaces, drop offs of different kinds and this is both a design issue and also signage and a maintenance issue.

Mr. ?: And really I think we're looking at something like driving surface issues as a category. All these start falling under traffic surface and then what to do about it.

Mr. McClune: What about just the issue of potholes? I mean, I'm not sure, I mean on a motorcycle you could fall into a pothole.

Ms. Bents: In Washington, D.C. you could fall into a pothole, there was one with a mattress in it and it took officials three days to notice it.

Mr. McClune: I think my point and again it's awareness, I know to the DOT folks in Pennsylvania potholes are a serious issue but I'm not sure that they're thinking about motorcyclists as we realize there's a pothole there, it's on the list, we'll get it fixed. Well, if a motorcyclist falls in that pothole you could have a dead person.

Ms. Bents: So how would you like to deal with that issue?

Mr. ?: You know, I just don't know how to get to it. It's, how do we get our DOT officials to think about motorcycles when they're dealing with maintenance and construction.

Ms. Bents: Take them for a ride on a motorcycle.

Mr. McClune: I can tell you, I fell in a pothole in Pennsylvania once and I called Howard Usilum, the Secretary of Transportation, I happen to know him, and I said, I just fell in a pothole, I think I just wrecked the front end of my car. He said, "we'll get right on it." Well, you know, it was still there like four weeks later.

Mr. Halladay: You didn't call the right person.

Ms. Bents: Well, you have a pothole, and you're the mayor of wherever, you've got lots of potholes, what do you do? Mark them with paint? Make them more visible in some way? Are there different maintenance practices, perhaps, that should be considered?

Mr. McClune: I think the point is the outcome of hitting a pothole is very different on a motorcycle than in an automobile or truck. Again, it's an awareness issue, total awareness. And you really need to get those potholes filled as quickly as possible.

Mr. Killion: Actually one of the things that we've done in South Dakota recently with regards to that issue is, and this kind of comes down to the awareness thing, ABATE of South Dakota working with the Department of Public Safety established a road hazard committee and we have a network of motorcyclists throughout the state who have an 800 number and a motorcyclist can call this 800 number and lodge a complaint, if you will about a pothole or something like that. We screen those calls so that someone doesn't call us up and complain about the deer running across the road and things like that; screen those calls to what we deem to be clearly motorcycle hazards that the DOT should address if they will and from that point that person reports directly to the DOT whoever is responsible, whether it's county or state or city. The Department of Public Safety has asked us that if those things aren't repaired, we just keep moving it up the line until it ultimately comes to the South Dakota Department of Public Safety. So, in other words, we keep following up on it until such time as it does get fixed and we've actually found that, it may seem like that creates a logistical issue for DOT but actually we've found that we really haven't had all that many valid complaints and those we've had have been taken care of promptly.

Mr. Halladay: I think that's an excellent idea and it puts some of the responsibility over on the motorcyclists and makes them kind of a soldier in the battle. We always depend on motorists to do that anyway and now it is motorcyclists. In addition to that the motorcyclist is obviously going to be the one most aware of the problem. You can drive over that same spot fifty times in a car and never realize it's a problem.

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, because our maintenance guys try to drive all the roads. They take different ways to work in the morning and a different way home at night to try to drive the roads as frequently as they can but if they're in a ¾ ton pick up it's not going to feel the same, so by involving the motorcyclist I think it's really a good idea. It's really no heartache from the perspective of the DOT if there's a place on the website to put that in or an 800 number. Some of them come to me where they're appropriate. There's a clearinghouse at the public information office and then they're sent out and adding another arm to that just wouldn't be a big deal.

Mr. Killion: Well, it seems to be working for us, we're hoping it will have more impact on about a half million people who come into the state every year. We're trying to get that word out, you know by passing out brochures and cards and so on.

Mr. Bloschock: I'm ready to go back and mention it at TEX DOT

Mr. Killion: Make no mistake about it. It's not making a huge dent but I mean every accident you can prevent is certainly

Ms. Bents: A crash worth preventing. So is this, do I hear a recommendation here, an endorsement of this kind of approach? Committee, council, what do you think?

Mr. ?: I'll second that idea. Sean, I'd like to hear what you think about an 800 number that would go to DOTs like that?

Mr. Maher: Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Mr. Killion: Our 800 number actually goes to basically like a clearinghouse or whatever. We have a motorcyclist in and she's actually also a nurse, but a motorcyclist in South Dakota who basically takes these calls on the 800 number and then she sits down and says O.K., this is a case of some deer running across the road, that doesn't count. This is a case of some mud clogs on the road from some farm machinery, that doesn't count. Here's a pothole, that counts. See and then from there it's moved on to DOT.

Mr. Bloschock: I'm going to sound provincial but I'd like to see a motorcycle icon on the TEX DOT webpage so we go over and click and lodge what it is.

Mr. ?: Yeah, there are pothole hotlines in any number of states why not have them on motorcycle hazard hotline that Federal Highway can encourage.

Mr.Zimmer: They're already are on roadhazards.org if you click on that and go to that website it is specifically for those types of issues

Ms. Van Kleeck: Then what happens with the information it gets

Mr. Zimmer: The information, you record it and then it goes specifically to that particular state or jurisdiction's DOT. They kick out an automatic letter; it goes right to them and describes the problem.

Mr. Bloschock: What I like about it going to the state DOT website is that it's immediate.

Mr. Killion: The South Dakota DOT has us linked, I think they just had to put a link to our site, as does the Department of Public Safety so we're all linked so that people can find their way into this.

Mr. ?: I did not know about road hazards.org.

Ms. Bents: Who maintains that? Is that an ABATE program?

Mr. Killion: No, actually, I think it's ABATE legal services in Indiana that started the program and I'm not too sure how expanded it has gotten. I know there were intentions a couple of years ago to take it on kind of a nationwide level, and as I said, I don't know how far out it has reached, but it is there.

Ms. Bents: O.K. Sean.

Mr. Maher: When you mentioned road hazards I thought maybe you were talking about in Ohio, a state website, I think what you want to do here is to create an identity that this is a motorcycle rider calling in and if you go with something generic road hazard.org, it doesn't raise that flag so to the extent that you want to elevate awareness of this being a motorcycle issue you need to identify it as coming from a motorcyclist so motorcycle hazards.

Mr. Bloschock: As soon as I get back to TEX DOT I'm going to the web page people and just try to get that idea out there.

Mr. ?: I think Mark's idea of just having it at the state DOT website is excellent because it is immediate, it goes right to the folks who can do something about it.

Mr. Bloschock: They deal with thousands of them every day. They make quick decisions but if it's earmarked as a motorcycle issue then obviously that's going to go into a certain pile real quick.

Ms. Van Kleeck: So the recommendation should be to require all state DOTs to have a motorcyclist hazard reporting site on their website.

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, that's one of those unfunded mandates, you can't require anybody to do anything.

Ms. Van Kleeck: Well, we can make the recommendation.

Mr. ?: I was just wondering how you, the state maintains roadways certainly but do you also communicate if it happens to be a city road or a county road?

Mr. Bloschock: What happens is, you probably recognize by my personality already that I'm sort of a pain on these sorts or things, so if I see a guard rail or a freeway terminal that's hit, many of these numbers I've just got memorized on my cell phone and I'm just going to call them in. That goes to the state office and then the proper jurisdiction, they take care of it. It goes to the city and it's immediate. It's immediate that they transfer that information by e-mail to that city or locale that is responsible for the maintenance of that.

Ms. Bents: So the state actually has the ability to file that information down to the appropriate parties?

Mr. Bloschock: It's amazing how quick it is.

Ms. Bents: We like that. O.K. so Kathy has made a suggestion that we have a recommendation that requires, encourages, endorses, states having a motorcyclists road hazard website with or without an 800 number.

Mr. Bloschock: You've got to have an 800 number because of folks that don't have a computer.

Ms. Bents: Not everybody has, you're absolutely right. Council, do you like that? I see lots of heads nodding. O.K. very good.

Mr. Bloschock: We're not talking about a stand alone website, maybe a link from an existing website.

Mr. ?: Yeah, it sounds to me like the issue of user, especially motorcycle user communication into the owners and operators and just really enhancing that and this mechanism and then, you know, pointing out the value of that and how it happens, require, encourage and all of that is a lot of details. That's great that TEX DOT has taken that on and supports that.

Mr. Zimmer: This is a good tool though that the user groups, like ABATE, and other groups can spread through their membership so that as they're out there, there's a lot of computer savvy individuals who can pick up on that.

Mr. Hennie: Then we can start getting the roads fixed right away.

Mr. Bloschock: Well from the DOT perspective we have a budget for safety and publications and that sort of stuff, the state DOT, I mean, you know, what if AASHTO took out some ads in Easy Rider or Biker or AIM magazine or whatever that kind of educated bikers that these sites were out there and that they should be part of, once again, "soldiers in the war" on bad roads.

Mr. ?: The first line of defense. Let them tell us about it.

Mr. Bloschock: We depend on that from the DOT perspective again, with car drivers. We depend on folks to call these things in. There are 77,000 miles of roads on the system in Texas so you're not going to see them all everyday. We depend on the drivers to do it though.

Mr. Killion: One of the things we ran into with our program, for membership, was their concern that DOT wouldn't listen to their complaints.

Mr. Bloschock: Somebody's going to get fired if it happens.

Mr. Killion: This goes back to the age-old issue of nobody pays attention to the motorcyclist out there and like I say, because we work closely with the Department of Public Safety, we've been able to convince a good portion of our membership that yes, in fact, they will listen, you know, we've just got to make sure we put it to the proper channels and so on.

Mr. Bloschock: If that e-mail comes to me, I know I have less than 10 days to answer it or it becomes an evaluation issue so, not listening to or not responding to it is not an option.

Ms. Bents: O.K. Any other maintenance issues? .

Mr. ?: I thought we were in design.

Ms Bents: Well, we've got to move a little bit beyond that.

Mr. Halladay: Potholes took us into maintenance.

Whole group: "yeah, potholes"; "yeah that was the transition"; "there were the joint issues"

Ms. Bents: We got those, focusing on greater awareness.

Mr. Maher: But did we get all the design issues?

Ms. Bents: Any other design issues?

Mr. Maher: Did anyone talk about barriers?

Ms Bents: No we didn't.

Mr. ?: We can get into barriers right after lunch, the real maintenance issue I want to talk about is my stomach growling.

Ms. Bents: Well that's where I was kind of going. This might be a good time to let you go for an hour. In your packets is a listing of area restaurants. There are actually three here in the hotel, we have Smithsons right next door which is a full service restaurant, I think they also have a buffet. There's the little sort of stand up café just across from that and there's also a bar and grille just around the corner and within the hotel. There are also other eateries in the area and you might get just slightly ahead of the crowd if we adjourn right now. So if I could ask you to come back in an hour, we can reconvene for the afternoon. .

Mr. ?: Thank you.

Ms. Bents: Thank you.

LUNCH

Ms. Bents: O.K. Can we get back to work? So we can get you fine people home? Can we get back inside? You've gotten some goodies while you were away at lunch, NHTSA sent over copies of the National Agenda for Motorcycle Safety and Steve says he has extras so if anyone would like a second one I have available copies here and Mike brought some materials as well.

Mr. Halladay: What Mark had mentioned is the CD on trees and the delicate balance along with the brochure and actually the brochure on breakaway sign supports that Bob had highlighted and also a one page front and back announcing where you can find information on the rulemaking for retro-reflectivity, the supplemental notice. Anything else on that Mary?

Ms. McDonough: Yeah, people wonder what that scribble is down in the lower right hand corner that's one of our staff who apparently decided he had to put his initials on it but what I wanted to tell you is that we have lots of DVDs, the tree video as we call it. We have lots of those and we're actually going to make more copies because one of our goals is to do more outreach so if you want more copies let Fran or Mo or me or any of us know and it's actually my team but it doesn't make any difference, you can do it through Fran since you have her contact information and I think it's the South Carolina legislature, they asked for copies for all their members which I think is great. You know, the more the merrier, I would like to see all kinds of people look at it. It's twelve minutes long and our environmental office even likes it so it's a very good DVD, (laughter)..

Ms. Bents: It's a DVD

Ms. McDonough: So if you want more copies, let us know. Right now we have the funds to reproduce copies so ask us now.

Ms. Bents: O.K. well as I mentioned this morning I think it's probably helpful to all of us to reflect for a few moments on where we've been and then we'll talk a little bit about where we're going so while you were taking a lunch break Shelley and I tried to frame what I think were the four recommendations from this morning. Do these sound right to you? What edits would you like to see? What did we miss? What did we make up that you didn't say?

Mr. Maher: Did it actually come out as a recommendation for Federal Highways to develop a brochure?

Ms. Bents: Motorcycle awareness brochure.

Mr. Halladay: That was one we liked. The target audience being the designers

Ms. Bents: I'm sure there were lots of others. We just picked up a couple of hot ones, we have complete transcripts but I just wanted to make sure that we, at least got the important parts, for the Federal Highway Administration to develop a brochure for roadway designers to raise awareness of motorcycle issues.

Mr: ?: To raise awareness of the characteristics, the concerns of the motorcycle as a vehicle?

Ms. Bents: Guidance or "¦. what do you want it to be?

Mr. Bloschock: These are so powerful because they're so easy to hand out and they're so easy to read. I don't know if I'd call these soft but they're kind of soft, they're not really a technical guide and they're just, sometimes my experience with folks that are decision makers is you don't have them for very much time, you got them for thirty seconds. So this helps with the thirty second time frame that you might have.

Ms. Bents: So are you thinking more in terms of a sort of flyer brochure as opposed to some sort of handbook? Do you have preferences?

Mr. McClune: Yeah, I guess that's what I was thinking, was something more along the line of these, maybe it could be one brochure that contains several topics or maybe a series of three brochures that cover a variety of topics with the word shall in it.

Ms. Bents: (laughter) shall develop. O.K., how about the other one? Did we capture the sense here? Topic being skid resistance, intersection markings, we'd like to have someone explore and improve design of maintenance practices there. Retro-reflectivity, pavement markings - you're going to endorse the Federal Highway initiatives. Riding surfaces and there were more than just the potholes and parallel lane shifts but all of those types of things and you'd like increased awareness of motorcyclists' perspective.

Mr. ?: We touched on signage but I'm sure we're going to get to that.

Ms. Bents: Yes, I think signage and barriers, and motorcycle hazard reporting, we talked about having some sort of link to a DOT website as well as a toll-free number for reporting maintenance issues or hazards of some kind that could then be brought to the attention of the appropriate maintenance staff.

Mr. ?: That could be integrated into that same brochure as a recommendation to DOTs that they establish that reporting mechanism.

Ms. Bents: O.K., how about two brochures. We can do anything here because we're advisory, right?

Mr. ?: If we could figure out the details of that. What would make most sense in terms of audiences and so forth?

Ms. McDonough: One of the things we can do as we update our website which will be done in, I hate to say three of four months because it might be six. We can put best practices on the website. And what a lot of the state DOT people ask us about, a lot, is what are other states doing? So if someone's doing that, like Steve, you were telling about it, we could say, "well, in South Dakota they do "x". So that's real easy to do and the brochure is real easy to do because it's not legislation, it's not official policy and all that, and we can get those out more quickly, it's just a matter of a couple months.

Ms. Bents: Is there anything you would like us to add to what we've accomplished so far this morning? O.K. that sounds good. We visited where we've been, now let's talk about where we're going. Are you happy with the process so far? Are we moving too quickly, too slowly? Is there same change you'd like to see? Mark?

Mr. Bloschock: We talked about it briefly at lunch just the four people that were sitting there and who had participated in processes like this before at the national level and the four in our group thought there might be benefit to this being a day and a half meeting. In other words, we're building up some steam, there's an opportunity in the evening to build up some camaraderie and finish it up the next day, with enough time for everybody to get back home. I know that's more cost and stuff but I think you get more than 1.5 times the value out of a day and a half meeting.

Ms. Bents: O.K., great organization. Anybody else, regarding what we're doing so far, change the format, change the style, anything at all?

Mr. Salontai: We also had a discussion about the frequency of this, just like the value in a day and a half, you actually, by having side bar discussions and informal discussions, you develop a lot more information. You sleep on things, you bring it back. Well the same thing in terms of frequency of this meeting occurring again. There was some mention of maybe next summer as a time to meet and get together again. I would recommend something shorter than that. It would allow us to go away and gather more ideas and more recommendations that we can bring for them and shoot for a closer space because if too much time goes by you lose momentum, you lose steam.

Ms. Bents: O.K. relating to that, it's one of my jobs at the end of today to get a sense of when you would like to meet again, but since we're there now, do you have preferences? Next summer is too long, Steve?

Mr. Zimmer: I don't have a particular preference, but to go with what Gerry was saying, it should be timed so that whatever we do kind of coincides with riding, the riding season. I mean now is a good time to meet because it's the end of the riding season for most people. We can develop whatever strategy and plans and put them in place over the winter so that when springtime hits and the influx of riders grows now they're facing new ideas and things that have been brought from this Council. Again, at the same time, springtime might be another time to meet and kind of followup with what's gone on and taken place over the course of the winter and what's ready to be brought forth. We can report to stakeholders, such as organizations like mine, this is what FHWA is coming out with. This is how we can help implement it and it's right at the beginning of the riding season so it can have a more dramatic impact and reach out and get to the people in a timely fashion.

Ms. Bents: So you're suggesting the next meeting should be early spring, perhaps?

Mr. Zimmer: I would say February, March, April - somewhere in that kind of a time frame.

Mr. Bloschock: You know, I was thinking that we would like sometime that coincides with the good times in the fiscal year for state agencies and that is the beginning of the fiscal year which is September lets say, September , October, and then sort of the middle of the fiscal year which is April or May. If you get it too far into the summer then we're out of out of state travel funds and that could make a difference on travel.

Mr. Hennie: It's also the beginning of the construction season, so we're talking about signage and temporary barriers and things and maybe case studies and things will be on front burners.

Ms. Bents: O.K. are there any other meetings that bring some or all of you to this area that you would like to tie your travel in with or anything like that?

Mr. Salontai: I'm here May 6 and 7.

(Laughter)

Mr. Bloschock: Are you playing solitaire or are you really checking the calendar.

Mr. Salontai: Calendar solitaire. Well, I actually skipped another meeting because there wasn't a lot of notice on this one and I don't know, maybe I'm unique, but a bit more notice and if we could set a date, even perhaps today before we get out of here, it would be great. Especially if we went to a day and a half format because now you might be talking about a 2-3 day commitment versus one day.

Mr. Halladay: Yeah, we appreciate the point on the notice. I know many of you talked to Mo Oliver from my office and I appreciate Mo's direct contact with many folks. We did want to get this up and running as quickly as we could, given all the processes we had to go through internally . I appreciate that the advance notice wasn't as long as we would have liked.

Mr. Salontai: And being the first meeting I can completely understand but going forward if we had 3-4 months notice to plan and schedule things, it would be helpful.

Ms. Bents: Any other comments, thoughts, suggestions, proposals. Gerry will be in town in early May. Do we want to join him then? It would be just past Cherry Blossom season but just before all the tourists show up.

Mr. Salontai: I'm also here April 23-25^th.

Ms. Bents: So you might be able to catch the tail end of the Cherry Blossoms.

Ms. Van Kleeck: You'll be busy; you won't be able to sit in a meeting all day

Mr. Salontai: Actually the 26 and the 27^th are open, no wait the 25^th too.

Ms. Bents: What days of the week are those?

Mr. Salontai: Last week of April - that's Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

Ms. Bents: That you're available or you're committed?

Mr. Salontai: No, that I'm available or it could even be the Thursday and Friday before then.

Ms. Bents: Well group of experienced travelers, anyone want to try to fly out of DC on a Friday night? Or maybe Wednesday, Thursday would be better?

Mr. Salontai: I would just stay the weekend.

Ms Bents: You certainly could stay the weekend and if we adjourn during the day on Friday if gives you half a shot at trying to really get out of town. What do you think?

Mr. Bloschock: I just wanted to say that getting out of Boston and into Washington was a lot of trouble on a Monday. You guys stay awfully busy. I usually leave on a Sunday. I think an e-mail query to everybody is probably the best way.

Mr. Salontai: It seems like the April-May time frame may match the season that you talked about and some schedules of folks, I kind of like the time frame to work with but I think I agree an e-mail check of the numbers, once everyone has their schedules.

Mr. ?: Yeah, that's probably the most efficient ways to get meetings going. Just as long as it's not the week of the 9^th, I'm in Maui.

Ms. Bents: I could do Maui.

The Council: We could do that. (laughter) Are you going to pick up the tab?

Ms. Bents: We need FAA don't we, borrow one of their jets, take the group, there's always a way.

Mr. Halladay: No, but I think April, May clearly, March, April, and May is a good time period. Waiting too much longer, I think, you lose momentum.

Ms. Bents: Does that work for everybody? In that case let's get back to the topics at hand. I've heard people say barriers, I've heard people say signage, where would you like to go next?

Mr. Hennie: Signs.

Ms. Bents: Signs? Jeff, please start with signs.

Mr. Hennie: Well, I think that this is obviously a big issue that encompasses a lot of different factors: visibility, the actual displaying of signs. I know a lot of states, I don't have the list in front of me, but a lot of states have recently passed legislation that made it mandatory for the state to post signs in construction areas, you know, motorcycles on uneven pavement, loose gravel, whatever the case is. But they mandated that the state DOT or road builder, whoever is responsible, must display signage. I don't know if that's something we'd like to advocate for at the federal level but that we should be cognizant that this is an issue that is coming before many state legislatures. Is that something we want to follow suit on or do we make the recommendation to the states for legislative fixes or without creating too much hardship.

Ms. Bents: How does that work, Mark?

Mr. Bloschock: I'll just start it off controversially and I'll say if I were king of the world the MUTCD might look different for motorcyclists and there would be some signs that were meant specifically for motorcycles and I think a lot of people, the motorcyclists, would look for them, whatever the logo was. The people who were not motorcyclists would ignore them and so I don't think we would be guilty of putting too many signs out like the MUTCD says. I don't know how to do it, we'd get it at the right height and all that other sort of stuff. There are experts besides us who would deal with signage but would we recommend that there be motorcycle hazard specific signs?

Ms. Bents: Council?

Mr. Maher I don't know the specifics but I think at one point the AMA had petitioned to have some motorcycle specific signs developed through the MUTCD.

Ms. Bents: We call it MU for short, since we're among friends.

Mr. Maher: I'd just like to point it out that among the rationales that they used in rejecting it was because when they tested the sign most people didn't understand its meaning. They tested it to the entire driving population instead of just the motorcyclists.

Mr. Bloschock: Which means most of the population would reject the information on the sign, which is perfect.

Mr. Maher: Yeah, most of them would but the reason they rejected doing the sign was because most people didn't understand it.

Mr. McClune: Because the car driver didn't understand it.

Mr. ?: Kind of like your pamphlet in the wrong envelope, right?

Mr. Bloschock: But I think you're wanting most drivers to shed the information anyway.

Mr. Maher: Yes, you are, but their rationale for not doing the sign was because most people rejected the sign.

Mr. Bloschock: But as we increase the awareness, let's say through this group and other groups that are motorcycle savvy, then that would become more acceptable and if you look at 4,500 deaths of motorcyclists as compared to the 43,000 or so, I think that's, what did she say?

Ms. Bents: The data's screaming.

Mr. Bloschock: The data's screaming out.

Mr. Maher: Well, you just need to reshape it. r

Mr. Halladay: Perhaps though, and again it's not my area of expertise but I think there is a general from the MUTCD community, that committee that handles that process, you don't want to create confusion out there. I mean, your point about regular drivers rejecting the sign.

Mr. Bloschock: Shedding the information.

Mr. Halladay: That is one reaction but I think another thing they worry about is as you alluded to, too many signs, too much information overload, and then confusion if they are not able to decipher a sign and not understand. So I'm guessing that's where they came from, and I'm not the expert though in terms of process.

Mr. Bloschock: I know but we have some experts that we could get with or whatever. For instance, you could take the brown signs for bird viewing area or some of the blue signs, most of us until we get to a certain age are going to shed that information.

Mr. Halladay: The observation from the committee would be the value of increased warning and advisory signs directly to the motorcycle community. Now how that's done, the limitations and how fast you can get there and so forth, we could see about that and where that comes from so maybe the observation/ recommendation is consideration of how you do communicate more directly to the rider.

Mr. Bloschock: But we would just be making a by-pass, good flyover recommendation for motorcycle specific signage.

Mr. Halladay: And again, I don't know our specific process that we take it from, but we've got people we can talk to and respond to with that kind of recommendation and as Jeff alluded to, there's a lot of different levels of that. There are guidelines, advisory, regulation, legislation and so forth, and some are more difficult than others. MUTCD can be difficult because of the considerations once you get something out there on the public roadway, but that's just a reality to work with.

Mr. Bloschock: Are you talking the signage in the everyday traffic situation, or are you talking about construction signage, because I think there might be two different solutions.

Mr. Halladay: I think you have to look at those two, both differently, but you'd have to breach the subject as to whether or not you had motorcycle specific signs at all.

Mr. Bloschock: See I love this. I knew it would be controversial.

Ms. Bents: About time"¦.

Mr. Halladay: I think you have to get past that first and then what goes out from there are permanent and construction signs.

Ms. Bents: But there is some precedent for that, there's big truck signs around certainly.

Mr. Hennie: And there are motorcycle specific signs on the beltway here, some of the expansion joints and bridge couplings they have "motorcycle" and "caution" signs.

Mr. Bloschock: What I'd like to ask you to do, Jeff, is if you could get some pictures of those signs, because I'd love to see them and I haven't and maybe e-mail them to the group.

Mr. Hennie: Yeah, I think I can do that.

Mr. Bloschock: There I am making assignments tonight and I regret doing that but I think everybody should see them.

Ms. Bents: Assignment, action.

Mr. Salontai: It's also interesting, I did a trip this summer and I'm out in the middle of Wyoming and there's a nice big, bright sign about "motorcycles be advised construction zone ahead" and problems. And then I'm going north on I-25 out of Denver and they have this huge paving and milling project going on and they have electronic signs up there, which all you have to do is input it real quickly and there's not a word about it. You hit the construction and not only is there milling in the lane, if you want to go to the next lane there was literally a six inch differential and there's no way you can move into the other lane.

Mr. Bloschock: Well you make a really good point now that we need to capture the changeable message boards, changeable message signs.

Mr. ?: Changeable message boards are a very easy target, low hanging fruit. Best practices.

Mr. Bloschock: And you say that was Wyoming that had motorcycle advisory signs?

Mr. Salontai: It had, built into within their construction, it was a construction advisory sign. They had a specific two lines about "motorcycles beware" and that was a construction sign, painted construction sign.

Mr. Bloschock: O.K., I'm going to call the WY DOT. I'm going to assign that to myself because I know those guys.

Mr. Salontai: Yeah, I was in Wyoming, I think, it was Wyoming.

Mr. Bloschock: I want to see that and we'll kick it out to everybody.

Mr. Zimmer: You might be able to answer this question. I seem to recall and it's been a long time since I've ridden in Oklahoma and Northern Texas, and Arizona going through cuts in the hillside where they have signs that say "caution dangerous crosswinds"

Mr. Bloschock: Uh huh.

Mr. Zimmer: I can't remember, but I think they have a picture of a motorcycle on it but maybe they didn't. It's been on my mind, but that would be someplace where it would be important to have a permanent sign because I've seen motorcycles move from one lane clear over to the other lane just because the cross wind catches them.

Mr. Bloschock: And from the prevailing winds that are almost always there.

Ms. Bents: Heavy trucks and RVs they all suffer from that. In New Mexico, I know there are wind advisory signs.

Mr. Zimmer: Like I said I can't remember.

Mr. Bloschock: Far west Texas, you'll have that in far west Texas.

Mr. Zimmer: Do they have motorcycles on them?

Mr. Killion: No, I don't think they have motorcycles on them. I know they have a number of those signs. The one that pops into my mind is the one as you're coming down 385 and you're approaching Roof Top Gardens on a rather steep hill you hit a wide open spot there and there's a sign that says "warning cross winds". But I couldn't tell you if there was a motorcycle on it.

Mr. Zimmer: It seems I remember seeing one but maybe that was just my wishful thinking about it.

Ms. Bents: Would a generic "cross winds" sign work because it does have potential.

Mr. Zimmer: It does, but it might be that we want to add, you know, a little square motorcycle underneath some of these standard signs. It would be just another little word of caution that goes directly to the motorcyclikst. You don't have to change the whole sign per se because it's an important message to get to everybody but most especially the riders.

Ms. Van Kleeck: Probably the sign people would say if it's an important message to get to everyone by putting a motorcyclist on it drivers would block it out.

Mr. Killion: Actually on the strong cross-winds signs that they display in the Black Hills they've actually got a windsock, now that I think about it, on the top of the sign so that when you have crosswinds it's very apparent.

Mr. Zimmer: You can see where it's at.

Ms. Bents: Any chance to make them more bandana-like, perhaps?

Mr. Killion: They're red.

Ms. Bents: O.K. for signage we have talked about having signs that specifically note certain hazards, either the infrastructure type like joints that aren't very smooth and so forth, and also to draw motorcyclists attention to maintenance issues such as the milled roads, to give you more warning. Now also we're talking about some environmental hazards and that could be permanent signage or sometimes changeable message signs. Is there anything else regarding signs that are important issues for motorcyclists?

Mr. McClune: One thing that concerns me is understanding the process and that's why I made the comment earlier about how do we involve the National Committee, how do we involve AASHTO? I mean they meet here in Washington every January, they do the rule making on these issues. My personal experience with the committee that's involved, is as they apply their engineering expertise, they do not bring in the motorcycle issue. So as they're making these decisions they're dealing with automobiles and trucks. Somehow, we have to bring into their awareness that as this rulemaking goes on, and it goes on every year, every year they amend the MUTCD, as you're deciding these things, the motorcyclist has to be part of your thought process. And the reason why I'm concerned about this is because if we're here saying we need signs, well it's that committee that will decide what's on the signs and if those guys are clueless, don't want to use the wrong word because they're all very, very bright engineers, but if they're clueless to the issues of motorcycles, and you have a dangerous cross wind, they will establish a sign that becomes universal for the entire United States. Then it may be meaningless. So do you understand my concern? And the question is how do you deal with that? Where do these outstanding highway engineers get the input for motorcycles and are we going to give them copies of our notes from these meetings? Are they going to be brought into these meetings? Are we going to have a chance to chat with them? I mean, these are the guys that will, everything that you saw on that list, these are the guys who will say, shall" or "may" or "must"..

Ms. Bents: Steve

Mr. Zimmer: We just talked about making brochures to illustrate the specific recommendations and issues that we're talking about to get out to the state engineers; perhaps we need to make a recommendation to send our recommendations to the MUTCD (AASHTO).

Mr. Bloschock: Those are state engineers, too. It's not the same guys but it's the same organizations.

Mr.?: Will there be a final report from this?

Ms. Bents: There will be a report that I'll prepare on the proceedings and then there's a report that will go from Federal Highway to the Office of the Secretary that will, I'm sure, expand upon what we do. There are other options, though, position papers perhaps that come from the Council to outside organizations, if that's something that you think, perhaps, that you want to do as a group of individuals. So you could make recommendations on topic areas to others.

Mr. Halladay: The point you raise is very well taken and certainly the products, the observations, the reports out of this conversation and subsequent ones can go a lot of different directions one of those being the National Committee, as you say will meet in January. But the AASHTO community also has a large subcommittee on design, a large subcommittee on construction, maintenance, highway traffic safety. Don Vaughn sits on the Highway Traffic Safety Committee, they're meeting this weekend in Oregon. So there's a lot of personal contacts, perhaps, that could be helping to raise that awareness in addition to papers and documents and so forth. In making that difference, in making it part of the normal process, the point you raised is more a process question. How do you change or affect a process? The examples of the signs that we were talking about before are examples of what we'd like to see but I think both of them are important observations: the process observations and some specifics about signage. There are ways and I think Mark has said a lot of it is talking about it. The right person raising awareness and having some material that can be useful to the larger group and there are venues, there are forums, within AASHTO, within the locality community, within the National Committee, so I think these are all options to consider, ways to get the word out.

Ms. Bents: Would you like to discuss those options a little more, or think about that for awhile?

Mr. Bloschock: Since we have a one day meeting we better get moving.

Ms. Bents: Which direction would you like to go?

Mr. Bloschock: Well, are we through with signs do you think? Did we beat them down pretty good?

Mr. Hennie: Yeah, I think we've covered all, at least the high points.

Mr. Bloschock: O.K. Are you ready, since you brought it up, are you ready to go on to something else?

Mr. Hennie: Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Bloschock: I think the next one was barriers. Barrier design is something that we were talking about. And you know I called one of my colleagues who has some video that he was showing. There's some video he has that most crash testers don't know exists, that there has been some motorcycle crash tests with some barriers. Have you seen them, Jeff?

Mr Hennie: No, I have not.

Mr. Bloschock: And when I deal with our crash testers at Texas Transportation Institute they're totally and wholly unaware of them. They won't be much longer but there are some so if anyone is interested in seeing them. What do you think you'd take, Dick, five minutes.

Mr. Powers: If the computer runs properly.

Mr. Bloschock: If it doesn't run we'll keep talking and you can mess with it. Could I suggest or propose that Dick be able to show some of these videos? They're not gross.

Mr. Hennie: Yes, no, I'd love to see them if you're asking me.

Mr. Bloschock: So when it comes to barrier design and that's one of my areas of expertise, longitudinal barrier design which includes pre-trail, transitions between pre-trail and guardrail; guardrail and then the end treatments that you see out there. They do not take into account in any way bicyclists or motorcyclists or pedestrians, the more vulnerable groups of folks. They are definitely to contain and redirect errant vehicles of different sizes. We look at passenger cars or we look at light commercial trucks or even heavy commercial trucks with some of these barriers and it would be, and it's going to be tough, since I'm into barrier design for years and years and decades and decades I really want to know how we would make barriers to do that and I'm not trying to evaluate. I want to stay creative. I'd like to hear somebody's input about how to do that. What is the way we could do that and I'm going to stop evaluating on barriers and let the rest of the group, I'll be quiet, I promise, on the barrier design and you guys and girls come up with some idea on how we could make more motorcycle friendly barriers.

Mr. Hennie: Well I think when I talk about barriers with my membership and with people, the one thing that seems to come up the most is cable barriers because you know the nickname egg slicer, baloney slicer, you know, different things because of the ability of cable to pass through soft tissue. It's not pretty but you know, as opposed to the corrugated metal or the curved metal that will do a better job of stopping motion. Are those any better? I don't know, I mean, I'm not an engineer so I don't know.

Mr. Bloschock: Here's why I think I like the cable barriers with this regard. If you're in a solid barrier, and Dick will be showing you this is a second. Solid barrier is not a pretty thing to run into. It's like running into a concrete wall. Guard rail is not as friendly because the deaths, the motorcycle deaths I'm aware of, you know, the person slid and they got caught on the post and that's pretty much what killed them otherwise they would have kept sliding. The thing about cable barriers is they're much smaller posts, they're more of a weak post and they're really, really far spaced. It depends on what the state allows and all that other sort of stuff, and it's slim but there's an opportunity for a sliding rider to get under that doesn't exist with anything else. I'm going to take the controversial position and say I think they might be safer because of that potential. But that's the concern, we all see the cable barriers and say, what did you say, soft tissue slicing? And we see that but otherwise if the person's down and sliding there's at least an opportunity to miss the post. Steve?

Mr. Zimmer: The one thing that comes to mind and this is information that has been recently brought apparently in the EU, they were endorsing cable barriers in many other countries and now they've reversed that and the Netherlands has banned them altogether because of the safety issue to motorcyclists and bicyclists, primarily.

Mr. Bloschock: Was it based on data or was it more of just an observational decision?

Mr. Zimmer: I can't tell you that. I don't know for sure.

Mr. Hennie: What I was told was that they went to the cable barriers because they thought it would be cheaper and then they determined that it was not cheaper.

Mr. Bloschock: We don't do them because they're cheaper and Dick and I discussed this today. We do them and we have 800 miles of them in Texas right now and we don't do them because they're cheaper because we spend all our safety money every year, every bit of it that we have for barriers, but we're able to cover more median barriers, many more miles then we would if we were doing concrete barriers. And so a number of things are happening with cable barriers that are encouraging to me and one is that we are able to start to tattle-tell where our accidents are happening where we used to use the grass, you know, folks would go up in the grass occasionally we'd have the cross-over accidents with horrible consequences that made the news. And so we're catching a lot of those now but we're also catching a lot of what we call nuisance hits, the smaller hits. But it's able to tattle-tale for us where the barriers need to be, eventually. So we're out there with these cable barriers, I think we're probably improving safety overall. But anything that you guys and girls think that we could do to improve cable barrier safety for motorcyclists, everybody would love to hear that, too. And I'm really interested in that thing in the Netherlands, I didn't know that.

Mr. Hennie: That's just about three weeks ago we heard from Muller.

Mr. Bloschock: Well, we met in Toronto on safety stuff with Mary and others with FHWA and all that but I hadn't heard that one and we talked about that a little bit.

Mr. Hennie: So, have you seen cases where a motorcycle has struck a cable barrier and the rider?

Mr. Bloschock: No, but Dick's going to show you some stuff here in just a second where the sliding rider's going to get into some guard rail and you can guess what's going to happen. But you know in some states, with some cable systems, you know, it's close to thirty feet apart. It depends on whether there's any elevation change along the road. It can't be too far apart if the road is going up and down, but if it's really straight, you can get some really long stretches and you've got this huge opportunity to get underneath it. A guardrail with wood post is 6'3" center to center, not much really of an opportunity to sneak under that but you get something that's out at 12 or 15 or 30 feet, now there's a huge opportunity potential to get underneath it.

Mr. Hennie: Well, maybe that's the direction we go in, it's just establish a base, a minimum base height of the bottom cable or distance between posts or without getting too technical, I mean, if there are areas of concern that we can identify and say look if we had built a cable barrier and if you would have made the cable six inches higher, we'd be a lot happier with that.

Mr. Blostock: The cables are up pretty high and I don't know the exact dimension but they have to catch the bumper or right above the bumper, we don't want to get under the bumper, so that they really are up fairly high. But anyway when I've explained it this way to motorcyclists, because that's one of the first things that everybody says, "what are you guys doing? I mean you're going to be killing people out here left and right". So I explain pretty much what I just said and they say, "huh, at least this way we have a chance".

Mr. Hennie: This is one of the biggest topics that comes up when we talk about barriers to the motorcyclist. Cable barriers, that's the first thing that comes out.

Mr. Bloschock: Dick, do you have anything you can add here verbally?

Mr. Powers: If I could get a word in here edgewise. (laughter) Prior to the meeting I did a quick run with the Fatality Analysis Reporting System data and as you've heard earlier, last year there were about 4500 motorcyclists killed and of that just under 2000 were single vehicle, just one motorcycle, crashes, it didn't involve other vehicles. So it's about 50/50 between single motorcycles running off the road and into something versus running into or being run into by an automobile. And of those 2,000 crashes, for 238 cases according to FARS, the most harmful event was the motorcyclists hitting a tree. That's 238 out of just under a thousand. The next most harmful event was guard rail and the number that FARS spit out for that was 200 and down from that was utility poles, just over 100 and then the one that is not particularly high but I brought it out anyway, was concrete barrier. It was differentiated from guard rail and the number for concrete barrier was 40. So we have 40 on concrete barrier, we've got 200 on traffic barriers of all types that FARS doesn't differentiate. But I think that one of the things I was able to get a hold of a couple of years ago was some tests that were run in Germany and I believe they used cadavers on motorcycles. You'll see the driver and motorcycle were propelled into both a metal beam and post guard rail and concrete safety shape type barrier. I think you'll all agree very readily that none of you ever want to hit either one. Another thing I'd like you to keep in mind is that the only reason that we put any guard rail out there at all is to keep vehicles on the road. Now the idea being, that if they run off the road at that point, the result is going to be far more serious hitting the guard rail. Of course, when you're on a motorcycle it's a different story. In fact, we kill over 1000 people a year on guard rail which is a little bit disconcerting but at the same time what would have happened if the guard rail had not been there. If the guard rail is shielding a hundred foot drop or a bridge pier or something like that, then obviously it would have been a fatality anyway. Personally we don't like guard rail because it is a hazard but in most cases, if it's properly designed and installed and selected it's the lesser of two evils and for most motor vehicles it works fine. But frankly when you're on a motorcycle if you hit anything with you're body at 60 mph or so it's going to hurt and guard rails are no exception. Again, I've heard a lot of people refer to cable barrier as T Slicer and maybe so but it's the softest system we have. It's designed to deflect 8, 10, 12 feet on its head and that deflection absorbs some of the crash energy. Concrete barrier doesn't move at all and all that energy goes into deforming the vehicle and lifting it up into the air and what not. The metal beam, post and beam guard rail is somewhere in between. It can deflect 2, 3, 4 feet depending on how hard it's hit and by what but it's still a rigid object and again you'll see in the test if you're on a motorcycle that's probably the worst kind of barrier to hit. That way you get flipped off your bike and you're sliding along the ground and you start hitting the posts at various speeds with various parts of your body. As Mark pointed out, the gap between posts is only a little over 6 feet but for some of the cable systems it's 30 feet, more typically it's 18 or 20 feet, so the cable is a more transparent barrier and it's easier to get under if you're sliding on the ground. And it's not going to stop you as suddenly as a strong metal post and beam would. Let's go ahead and look at the tests.

Mr. Bloschock: I'm just going to reiterate what Dick just said and I've said this almost exactly in court before is that any of these barriers are hazards all by themselves. We put them out there reluctantly but we know that we're protecting vehicles from a hazard greater than the hazard of the barrier itself. Dick, do you know what you're doing.

Mr. Powers: No.

Mr. Bloschock: There you go.

Ms. Boyd: Is there sound?

Mr. Powers: No.

Mr. Bloschock: No.

Ms. Boyd: Good.

VIDEO

Mr. Powers: See this is another post and beam type rail and as soon as the bike hits it the rider is ejected.

Mr. Bloschock: Dick, do you think these are European or German tests?

Mr. Powers: Yes, they're German. This is the same test in a different group. This is the front view, you see him, he falls off the bike, he basically lands on top of the barrier and slides along both the metal beam rail and each of the individual posts.

Ms. Boyd: Does it matter how fast he's going?

Mr. Powers: I'm not sure what speed these were run at.

Mr. Bloschock: They look lime 30 mph to me, they're not 60.

Mr. Powers: And this is a concrete barrier. And see it's much smoother but it doesn't help the rider very much, you got a better view of that. I guess you can safely say the concrete is better for the bike.

Mr. Bloschock: It just has some scraping damage.

Mr. Powers: And if that were shielding a bridge pier or something hazardous, the driver would be in pretty bad shape. This is the case where the rider is already down as he slides into the barrier.

Mr. Bloschock: This is strong post and metal rail.

Mr. Powers: Yes, this is strong post design. This is concrete barrier where the bike and rider are down before their initial contact. Again, with a solid face concrete barrier there's no snagging potential like there is with the post and beam type system. It's still pretty violent death. I think that's all. Are there any questions? Anything you want to see over again? I guess the point is, hitting any kind of barrier with just your body is going to hurt ,and I don't personally think there would be much difference between a cable barrier versus the concrete ones that have been out there for 30 or 40 years already. With 200 fatalities a year, it's a reasonably sizable number; when you look at 45,000 total fatalities it's not a big chunk of the pie. And to develop a barrier that would be totally innocuous to motorcyclist, I think, would be very difficult, almost impractical. You'd probably need some kind of a net or something which would work on a human body but wouldn't do anything with a car or a truck or a bus or a tractor trailer which is by far the largest percent of vehicles on the roadway. It would be nice if we could develop a one size fits all kind of thing but I just don't think that's within the realm of practicality. You know, something that keeps vehicles from more serious hazard but can be hit by a body sliding along the road at high speed without any serious damage.

Mr. Halladay: Do you know if the Germans made any changes to designs or did they make any criteria selection differences?

Mr. Powers: No, I don't know. I know the motorcycle usage is a lot higher in Europe than it is here and they think they're aware of the problem. I believe I've heard that in some cases they've padded the guard rail posts but personally if you're sliding on the ground at 60 mph I'm not sure whether one or two inches of padding on a metal post or wood post is going to do very much. It's still going to be a pretty traumatic event.

Mr.?: It's not the hitting, it's the stopping

Mr. Bloschock: Well, from the standpoint of barrier designers, we certainly would be open to any ideas that folks have because, you know, when you're too close to barrier design for too long you might be missing some stuff.

Mr. McClune: I wonder if it would be appropriate that there be some work or study that would be sponsored, I mean Federal Highway puts out grants all the time for investigation of highway safety issues. Some may be very expensive, some don't have to be, but to investigate, even if it were a literature search to see what was going on in Europe just so that we would have some basis for a decision that we should do something or we shouldn't do something. I know the barrier manufacturers or the impact attenuator manufacturers here in North America probably haven't really thought a lot about this issue and if Federal Highways directed an information request from the barrier industry to collect whatever information would be available for guard rail and motorcycle crashes at least it would be a basis for information.

Mr. Bloschock: Mike there must be something with the Europeans that we're missing and the reason I say that is motorcycles in the central European countries, not England, where you're on the other side of the road. And I've motorcycled over there and I've noticed that they just seem to be a whole lot more motorcycle savvy and motorcycle friendly. I think, Dick, you said there's just a lot more motorcycles there. Is that what you were alluding to?

Mr. Powers: Yes.

Mr. Bloschock: It just seems like it would bear some research over there and I don't even know if we've done that on this side. If we've looked at what it is that they look at with regard to motorcycles. I know the culture is just entirely different with other drivers with the respect that they show motorcyclists. We don't see quite as much of that here.

Mr. Powers: You know, when Harry Taylor still worked for us he had a lot of contacts with some of the European counterparts and he was looking into some of the counter-measures, that's where the padded posts came up. It was my understanding that they didn't do it universally, they did it at problem locations and one of the locations they found was fairly common for bikers to run off the road is in the case of a compound curve where it starts out relatively flat and all of a sudden the radius decreases significantly and when you're used to leaning one way and all of a sudden you have to lean a whole lot further or you run off the road, then people tend to run off the road. I think personally, it's unfortunate that we don't have the results of the detailed motorcycle crash causation study because all of the things we're talking about are pretty much common sense approaches to making the roads safer for bikers but we still don't know what affect that might be likely to have on the 4,000 or so riders that are being killed each year. You know, whether the things we're talking about are actually the things that are causing the motorcyclists to get killed, we really ought to try to get our hands around any way we can.

Mr. Hennie: My commitment's taken but I believe the crash study only focuses on what happens up to the crash so once the crash occurs the injury, death that's not going to be in the study at all.

Ms Bents: Not true.

Mr. Hennie: Really? I'm glad to hear that.

Mr. Powers: I hope not. I hope there's going to be details about what the vehicle hit and if it's a guard rail, what type of guard rail and those kinds of details because that's really what we need.

Ms. Bents: Absolutely, it's a great deal of detail on all aspects, certainly there's a great focus on the rider in terms of training, experience, fatigue, mental condition, all sorts of things. Excruciating detail on the motorcycles themselves to the extent that even the pre-crash condition of every component of the motorcycle that can be determined, that's included. For the environment, we're down to things such as the timing of traffic signals and so forth so it's the whole pre-crash, crash environment and then the injury, relating the injury to the injury causation, to the extent possible. What did the rider and the passenger hit and what was the outcome will be determined, and of course, death goes up to thirty days so there will be at least a thirty day follow through on that.

Mr.: We keep referencing this study but it's not going to be ready for public consumption for several years.

Ms. Bents: Right. Just the pilot work is underway. Right now what's happening with the motorcycle crash causation pilot study, which is a contract which my company holds, is that we are in the process of revising data forms, creating a very detailed coding manual and creating formal training materials which did not exist before. There will be about 2000 data elements and that's only if there's one of everything. So it's a great deal of detail; it's going to take some time. We hope to have actual crash investigations to begin on the pilot study cases to test out all the forms and the methodology in the March/April time frame and the National Study will, we hope, dove tail with that so that by the time we have the bugs worked out in the first thirty five cases it will be time for the National Study to take over. So you're talking about probably next summer at the earliest where the formal data collection for the National Study begins and depending upon funding it could run three or four years to get the number of crashes that are needed in order to be able to make determinations.

You know, you think a couple of thousand crashes is a lot but when you start breaking them down by single vehicle versus multiple vehicle and this size bike versus that size bike and this age driver versus that age driver then the cells get smaller and smaller for analysis. It can take several years before you have a large enough pool of data that you can begin to make determinations with certainty as to various aspects of crashes. The process is under way but it's going to take a little while.

Mr. Halladay: I was just going to mention, Mark, you're probably familiar with the international scanning program. You talk about how there are mechanisms to find out what the other foreign countries are doing and yes there are, and there have been a series of safety topics that have been subjects of scans over the past few years. One of the things we could take under consideration is a motorcycle scan.

Mr. Bloschock: Can I volunteer to go on that one?

Mr. Halladay: It's quite a bit of work, I don't know if you would really want to.

Mr. Bloschock: I understand work, I'm all right with it.

Mr. Halladay: Right, but we try to take advantage of that kind of technology, that kind of knowledge, with the experience and background from foreign countries because we can find a lot there. And I think we've been aware, I think you mentioned Victoria, Australia, earlier, I think we've seen some German publications and what Dick showed right now and how that might be affecting their design philosophies. I think some of those experiences and findings are captured, so one of the formal mechanisms is, and there are other ways to do it, but one of the formal mechanisms is to formulate an international scanning team and getting over and asking these sorts of questions.

Mr. Bloschock: For example, our French division head, along with a lot of other state DOT bridge engineers, went on a bridge scanning tour. It looked a lot like vacation to a lot of folks but the issue is the three weeks that they spent over there they visited day and night, bridges all over the place and they came back with a new perspective, a new compilation of information, different ways maybe to look at things. So there is a lot of value in these international scanning tours beyond the vacation value. And I understand it's work.

Ms. Bents: And Jeff to get back to your question, I have one other thought. NHTSA has a program called CODES and in CODES various states link hospital data with police traffic crash reports and in Maryland they just presented a paper last week where they looked at motorcyclists who were seriously injured, some of whom died, not all of them, but they were not dead on scene. In linking the information between the police reports and the hospital records, I know one of the slides I saw were the kinds of roadside objects hit by riders who were in single vehicle crashes. It was so many culverts, and so many this and so many thats and so the CODES project may be a place where we can begin to get some information on just what kinds of roadside hardware are involved in motorcyclists injuries. So that's available now.

More on barriers? Looks like hitting them is a truly bad idea no matter what the design but suggestions, thoughts of the Council, something, I heard a suggestion about a literature review, at the very least.

Mr. Hennie: Didn't you suggest that Federal Highway put together some sort of a list or a pamphlet or something to bring to groups like AASHTO, the state engineer. I know that's something that's been active before that these are the people that are actually doing the design work. They're the ones who need to get the information.

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, Mike, we're not so much doing the design work, what they are - state DOT folks. If they're not doing the design work, they're hiring the people who are doing the design work and prioritizing that work so that is the right place to get to.

Mr. McClune: I guess my question is, where does the expertise come from? Because I think a lot of this is unchartered water, territory and in that case, historically, the solutions are for Federal Highway to turn to industry to ask them to investigate, either on their own or through specification change or through grant. Ask them to investigate alternative engineering designs for guard rail taddress this problem.hat might be a little more forgiving to motorcyclists. And you're right, you'll probably come up with an albatross that won't work or won't work for all types of vehicles but it's never been looked at before.

Mr. Hennie: There might be some creative genius somewhere ready to

Mr. McClune: So that would be a recommendation.

Mr. Halladay: Right. No, I mean your reference to the industry, private sector as a source of some innovation is very appropriate. Obviously we're a partner in many of those cases but many of those industries, as you're aware, ATSSA members are multi-national at this point, voting or perhaps, I'm not sure but you've got those sorts of design characteristics. I think that you're in a position to see how they're coming to you through forums in addition to the states and the U.S. So that could be something to take to ATSSA and hear what type of reception you get.

Mr. Bloschock: We certainly find out immediately what kind of information is available domestically. My guess is not a lot.

Mr. Powers: I would point out that we've been trying for years to get in service performance evaluation on our highway hardware it's basically accepted as a result of successful passing of specific tests. Obviously, out in the field it can be hit by any number or type of vehicle at any speed, at any angles, so we like to find out how they are actually working in the field. Most state highway agencies don't have the time to devote to that and a lot of the active manufacturers are afraid of liability issues if somebody hits a barrier and it doesn't work just exactly the way it's suppose to. They prefer not to make that public information. It's exceedingly difficult to get outside the administration, across the board, regardless of the purpose you know they plan to use it, are going to use it.

Mr. ?: It makes sense.

Mr. Powers: I think it's pretty obvious from the crash tests that for the barrier to be motorcyclist friendly it has to have a smooth face, you can't have anything that's going to catch parts of the driver. And right now the only smooth faced barriers we have basically are solid concrete barriers. It's still going to hurt when you crash into them but you're not likely to get your limbs severed or something like that.

Ms. Van Kleeck: And just to follow up on that, not these kinds of barriers, but acoustic barriers, as well, that sometimes have protrusions on them for acoustic or aesthetic reasons. Those would be much better if they have a flat surface rather than something sticking out of it. So I don't know if those are the same. What kind of design people design acoustic barriers and whether DOTs approve those projects as well.

Mr. Bloschock: We approve those. In Texas anyway, we don't mount them to barriers unless they're crash tested. We have one that is crash tested and it's smooth. The other ones have to be way back somewhere because otherwise vehicles get into them and knock them off.

Ms. Bents: Any other barrier issues?

Mr. Zimmer: We have air bag cars, why not airbag guard rails.

Mr. ?: What about airbags for motorcycles

Mr. ?: They've already got them. Boeing has one

Ms. Bents: Honda

Mr.?: I think Yamaha just came out with one, too

Mr. McClune: As long as we're talking about that, again I'm not quite sure I understand what the interface will be between this committee and the manufacturers of motorcycles but I think there should be some conversation between this committee and the manufacturers of motorcycles. I don't pretend to be an engineer or a motorcycle expert as far as mechanics of most motorcycles are concerned but, you know, things just come to mind that just make a lot of sense to me and one being that over the past five years I think every American and European automobile has ABS brakes. I don't know the reality of that for motorcycles. I do know that when I lock up my brakes, if I hit the front brake first I do a nose dive, if I hit the back brake too hard and fast, which I usually do, the bike comes out from underneath me. There are things like ABS brakes that might be applied to motorcycles which I'm sure could work.

There is also a concept which I heard of recently that's called linked brakes which means when you apply the front brake or the rear brake the opposite brake is applied with equal pressure I just don't know of any thought or data. Airbag is another, whether or not there's a place for airbags on motorcycles. They certainly work on cars. So if we are trying to address 4,000 fatalities a year should there not be some conversation with the folks that are building these bikes.

Mr. Bloschock: The folks who build them would probably listen but they wouldn't talk for liability issues.

Mr. Hennie: And that dialogue is pretty much already open with the quarterly NHTSA meetings. We talk about airbags

Mr. McClune: O.K. I'm not aware of any of that. I'm just bringing it up.

Ms. Van Kleeck: There is all sorts of ongoing work on that and a lot came to ATSSA and the brake system and the NTSB.

Ms. McDonough: And this is way off the subject of this committee, probably, but the NTSB chairman was here earlier, from the two day forum last month on all sorts of motorcycle safety issues. That was one of the panel discussions and I think that on their website that presentation is available.

Ms. Bents: It is.

Mr. Bloschock: And I think as those issues might be directly impacted or impacting to, impacting by or to, the infrastructure, we can certainly make those observations here in this committee, As I say, we will partner with NHTSA, and there are other forums, but if it's desire to reinforce it because of an infrastructure link, it's a particular focus of this committee then I wouldn't hesitate to go forward.

Mr. Zimmer: We'll probably see a lot more of the interaction with the manufacturers when we talk about Intelligent Transportation Systems and those sorts of on-board type activities that are going to be linked to the infrastructure directly.

Ms. Bents: Sue Ryan is here from NHTSA. Sue, could you give us 20 words or less about NHTSA's committee, motorcycle committee and what may be of interest to the Council?

Sue Ryan: We do have a vehicle side of our office that does focus on motorcycles and automobiles and other things. We hold a quarterly, for lack of a better word, motorcycle networking meeting where we bring together a lot of the motorcycle organizations that are here at the table as well as manufacturers, law enforcement folks, folks from the alcohol industry, to talk about a variety of issues. Sort of whatever the group thinks is most important to talk about. We talked about ABS brakes at one of the meetings for example. We put that together quarterly and anybody is invited to come if you'd like to sit in on that.

Mr. Hennie: NHTSA did an extensive braking study including ABS.

Mr. Bloschock: You said they already have ABS?

Mr. Zimmer: Some of the ABS systems are working pretty good. I think they're still working on some of the link systems, they're not, I don't think, catching on quite as well as the ABS. Now, I'm kind of reflecting my own personal motivations here, but I know there are a number of manufactures that are working on ABS systems. BMW, and I think Honda are.

Mr. Bloschock: Honda has a link system.

Mr. Salontai: However getting back to our charter, our opportunity is to provide input to change the design, construction, and maintenance of roads, right? Which is a great opportunity for us.

Ms. Bents: And a unique opportunity. Thank you, Gerry. Ok, so anything else regarding barriers? I see a lot of people who look like they could do with a 10 minute break. It's almost 2:15. Get back about 2:25 or so.

Mr. Salontai: Want to talk about turns and compound turns and increasing radius turns and I think merge lanes, I don't know, I don't have the numbers in front of me but are they problematic? Are they not? I mean, I think they're definitely within the scope of this group.

Mr. Bloschock: Highway design centers know about compound curves for sure, we've got like two of them in Texas.

Ms. Bents: And one's bad, right?

Mr. Bloschock: They're bad, yeah, especially on a motorcycle. And I don't take it everyday on a motorcycle but I take it almost everyday in a car and you have to get ready for it. I think there should be a warning sign but on the merge lanes, I'm not that familiar with it, so you're thinking when you merge onto the curve.

Mr. Hennie: Yeah, I guess I was hoping that you guys would have a little information about it or maybe that's something that deserves a deeper look down the road. But I just think, you know, when you're merging traffic together, that's where problems come in.

Mr. Salontai: Merge- the length of transitions on ramps seem to be shortening with time. In California, at least, in the major metropolitan areas it is occurring. That may be the cost of right of way and the need to expand, you know, the facility and get more traffic, more cars on it. Lanes are also narrowing and those are all becoming issues with motorcyclists. I notice that just from personal experience that the transition lengths, maybe it's just perception and not reality, but what that causes is erratic movements from drivers trying to hustle and get on highways, which is a safety issue, then, for a motorcyclist who is riding along the slow lane.

Mr. Bloschock: I'm going to assign that to me to get with the roadway designers at the national level and see if that changed, shortened that is. It shouldn't have shortened but I'm going to check that out.

Mr. Halladay: But I think your question about sort of process how much gets on the table today, how deeply we get into issues is, as I mentioned on the outset, we have a lot of different ways we can go. We can just frame the issues and I think kind of what we're doing today is hitting the high points and moving forward with some thoughts certainly but really just at the higher level. So maybe getting a sense from the group of coming to the next steps, which we'll get to as we close out today, if you have some more thought on that I think it would be valuable input. There's no one answer that I can come up with.

Ms. Bents: Jeff?

Mr. Hennie: I don't know maybe toll, toll booth issues might be something under our scope as well. I'm just trying to think, to get as many things on record today as we can so when we come back, I don't know if that's a problem with fatalities and crashes but anyone whose been through a toll booth before on a motorcycle knows it's not all fun. Maybe since that is sort of infrastructure related?

Mr. Bloschock: It's interesting because we're going to be opening some toll roads for a time in central Texas on November 1. So now that you mention it, I'm going to watch that. A big issue that I would think at toll booths just from a motorcyclist perspective is putting your foot down on some greasy, slimy water. No, I never run, almost never, just in that right wheel rut in Texas because that's where the air conditioner water is. When you go into an intersection you do not want to be in the right wheel rut when you go through because everybody who has waited there has pooled water on top of that oil.

Mr. ?: The environmentalists are going to recommend putting grates that are parallel to the lines. (laughter)

Mr. Bloschoch: It will be how they provide roughness there but that's really interesting and I don't have a lot of experience of going through toll booths, maybe in some other states but that, I'm going to watch that one.

Mr. Zimmer: One of the issues that has come out in some other states with toll booths is related to EZ Pass. A lot of cars have EZPass. Motorcycles have become somewhat problematic. It has caused issues in the past, I know, Pennsylvania, I think it was, dealt with this issue. Radio mounted so that it can be read by the reader as you go through and still make it aesthetically pleasing so that the motorcyclist doesn't have this great big placard out on the front of the bike and that sort of thing. So this is an issue that has to be dealt with as you deal with tolls.

Mr. ?: I guess it's kind of an ITS

Mr. Zimmer: Again, well, EZPass, ITS, toll roads.

Mr. Bloschock: I'm going to keep my eyes open because it's just opening in a couple of days so let's see what happens.

Mr.: Which one 130 or ?

Mr. Bloschock: 130 and 45 up north, north of Mopack (?) That one, we're just starting to get it open, more to come.

Ms. Bents: So is this our segue into ITS issues? Do we have ITS issues?

Mr. Zimmer: Can we talk about maintenance with regard to crack sealant and the different types of sealers that we put down?

Ms. Bents: We sure can. Whatever you want, this is your council.

Mr. ?: This is early on, I know another fifteen month as a point to go forward with

Mr. Zimmer: I think that's one of the issues that, you know, a lot of my riders talk about is tar snakes, whatever you want to call them, those places where they go on and they squiggle out a line of cement"¦

Mr. Bloschock: Seal crack

Mr. Zimmer: Seal crack and the types of materials that are being used, some of them are not a problem, others are not a problem until it rains, it's an issue that varies from location to location as to what they're actually using, in terms of materials to seal those. That's just one of the things that we use in maintenance practices, I wanted to make sure that we talked about because I found out from personal experience that some of them are pretty slick ones when wet.

Mr. Hennie: Well, I think when we were talking about the surface integrity issues and the skid resistance, I think if we could magically turn a switch on today and have maintenance construction and vendors and everybody think in terms of skid resistance and not just durability, costs and all that other sort of stuff. I'm not going to say those problems will take care of themselves but at least that awareness would help those things change. Once again, back to the stop line someone who was so proud of the thermoplastic committees he's been on for very many years, said, "we never thought of that." We just didn't think of motorcyclists falling down on the stop line, we're proud of the seven years of durability out of them, but now he's thinking differently.

Ms. Bents: That's great. So, in terms of sealants and so forth, do we want to make a recommendation? How would you like to proceed with that?

Mr. Zimmer: Is that one of the things we just capture under skid and surface conditions? Don't want to miss it.

Mr. Hennie: We don't want to miss it, that's the main thing. How we address it, that's, you know, just as long as we address it.

Mr.?: You can take that to armor also.

Ms. Bents: Armor?

Mr ?.: Armor plates. Big metal plates, armor for any surface point.

Mr. Halladay: Some of them are really maintenance related, some of them construction related, temporary conditions, in some cases, but the tar is not, the sealant, the choices that the states and others have made.

Mr. Bloschock: Metal plates are real easy. You write a spec and you have something that's called "tyre grip". I think it's t-y-r-e grip. Do an internet search, and it's just an adhesive, skid resistant thing that can be applied. All you need is a spec that says if you use a plate you must have tyre grip or an equivalent as approved by the engineer. There you go.

Mr. Killion: As I said earlier, and again I don't know whether this is feasible or not but highlighting or illuminating the leading edge of that steel with some sort of reflective material.

Mr. Bloschock: I think what would happen is that the material that would be put on the plate itself would be what you would see as the plate coming because it could be any color. The resin base could be any color you want it to be. And I think that would do it. That's an excellent idea.

Mr.Killion: But, yeah, somehow or another you need to know where it's at and at then at least have some traction on it to.

Mr. Bloschock: The traction is amazing on that stuff.

Mr. Killion: Around here they use a like a little bit of hot or cold patch and build up a little asphalt ramp so it's not a right angle but more of a little slope.

Mr. Bloschock: The problem is, I've designed those plates before and if you're going to support 80,000 pounds on an axle of a truck the plate starts getting pretty thick.

Mr.Killiom: Is there a spec for building up paving, paving up to those?

Mr. Bloschock: Not that I'm aware of but it gets done just like everyone said they observed. But I think the color, if tyre grip or an equivalent was put on with a color you'd see it. That's just an excellent idea that I never thought of either.

Ms. Bents: Well, I think we've made things better in Texas today. (laughter)

Mr. Bloschock: Well, we're going to make them better everywhere else too. I'm going to call the tyre grip people when I get back.

Ms. Bents: Tell them, "make it in a bright color".

Mr. Bloschock: No, they do, they make it, they'll make it in any color you want. I've seen it in blue for hurricane evacuation areas.

Ms. Bents: How about that? Other road surface issues, maintenance issues, construction issues?

Mr. Zimmer: Another real issue of maintenance is, and again, this is something that's been going on for some time, the gravel build up. Build up in corners and turns where water drifts down over the highway and I think that can probably be addressed as we deal with the road hazards issue. If we have an area or there's a specific area that perpetually has this build up, a little silt in the bottom of the turn or whatever, perhaps there needs to be something done to address that issue. Anytime there's significant rain of some sort or there seems to be a gravel or silt build up in the corner perhaps they need to look at their drainage issues and deal with that. Not only just for motorcycles but for other vehicles as well, primarily because it's a hazard for motorcycles. I mean these are all maintenance kinds of things.

Mr. Hennie: Perhaps this is something that the website or the 800 number that we talked about earlier, you know we get half a dozen calls in, "hey, there's a big gravel patch", they'll take care of it.

Mr. Bloschock: That's a great use of the 800 number and once bikers are aware there's an 800 number out there, and they've filled it up with bona fide stuff like that, somebody will look at it and say, "we keep getting a call at this location and I don't like getting these calls" and they'll go out and figure out a way to deal with it.

Mr. Zimmer: This time of year it's leaves.

Mr. Bloschock: Oh, yeah, wet leaves, great stuff.

Mr. Zimmer: They come and go but they're pretty treacherous.

Mr. Bloschock: You have to explain that to a motorist when they're new. Wet leaves, black ice, same thing.

Mr. Zimmer: Same thing.

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah.

Ms. Bents: Other thoughts?

Mr. Salontai: Shoulder construction?

Ms. Bents: Shoulder construction. What do you have to say about that Gerry?

Mr. Salontai: Drop offs from the pavement to gravel, the differential. No shoulder at all, shoulder widths which I know becomes a right of way, and other issues, cost issues. It's a cost issue.

Ms Bents: Can you expand a little bit on just how that affects motorcyclists, what's good? What's bad? Drop offs, I think we talked about earlier. Lack of shoulder, why is that an issue? Moving around a roadside hazard. Just to help us frame the issue.

Mr. Zimmer: I have first hand experience. I was out riding with a group one night; we had to pull over for an emergency. There was what looked like a shoulder; you had enough room for the tires to drop off the pavement, we stopped and from the edge of the pavement it went over about a foot and then went straight down into the ditch. And in fact, I went to put my foot down and I just kept on going over and unfortunately broke my brake lighter off but it was an issue that there was no shoulder there and so, in the dark you couldn't tell. It was a dark country road. I didn't know that, so that's an issue.

Ms. Bents: Shoulder issues? Rumble strips? I haven't heard anybody say rumble strips.

Mr.?: We talked about that a little bit about milled surfaces.

Mr. Bloschock: Rumble strips the edge stripes, I mean, is anyone aware of any problems on rumble strips because we sure use them and they're cheap and we think they save a lot of lives but on the effect of, in just the little microcosm of motorcycles, are rumble strips

Mr.?: I've hit them with my bike before but I haven't, you know, ridden on them for a while. I mean, is there a problem?

Mr. ?: Not that I'm aware of. Not an overwhelming one. I mean I don't know, you ever hear much about those

Mr. Salontai: I have a cute anecdote about rumble strips and the median.

Mr. Bloschock: Center line?

Mr. Salontai: A picture of the center line.

Mr. Bloschock: We do that on some places where you know you've had some cross-overs; where you've been going straight in Texas for 140 miles and those first couple of curves you put those on just to kind of wake folks up rather than have them wander into that other lane on a two laner. You're not going to see too much of them.

Mr. Zimmer: In places where I think they've been problematic are places like, if you've been up 79 where 79 joins in on 70 in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, those rumble strips are in the middle of the lane. They're not on the side of the road, they're right in the middle. They're probably four or five sets of them and they're not like the rumble strips on the side where they're small, narrow, they're big.

Mr. ?: Are these coming up to a stop sign or a signal?

Mr. Zimmer: They're coming up to a big hard right hand turn and I think those, as we talked earlier, are a little more problematic in that they're bigger and they create more of a vibration and a shock to the rider and that's the ones I know of. It seems like someone from out west or northwest, I think, brought that to my attention one time. Whether it's in the design of the rumble strips or not , I don't know. I assume that that probably is what the problem was. It was that they were bigger, a little bit taller, a little bit farther apart, so that caused the problem with the rider.

Mr. Bloschock: One of the things that I saw, I understand what you're talking about, one of the things that Ontario did, the Ministry of Transport in Ontario, which I thought was interesting coming into that curve, rather than putting those in Texas and in so many other places, and usually they're pretty aggressive because they're meant to rumble you pretty hard to wake you up. In their case it wasn't as aggressive and they took them and had them spaced out and then they started putting the spaces slowly closer together so that the input you were getting was a higher frequency going up so it really got your attention, It really woke you up and they had one place in Toronto where they were having Friday accidents with trucks and they had asked me about the monster rail, our biggest barrier, 7'6" barrier, but very expensive and they tried that and it cured it. They had tried rumble strips before and it just didn't do anything but now by bringing the frequency up inside the cab or inside your helmet or whatever, but not as aggressive. It wasn't as aggressive just by bringing the spacing in. I haven't seen it in the U.S. it was in Toronto and it was kind of an interesting

Mr. Zimmer: These up here on 79 do get progressively closer. I call them wake up stupid strips. You go over one set and the next set's a little closer, a little closer, a little closer until you're right into the turn on the ramp.

Mr. Bloschock: That's a good idea. Maybe it might be too aggressive but I mean it's a good idea to get them closer and get everybody woke up.

Ms. Bents: Other topics? Design? Maintenance? Construction? You ready to talk techie? ITS? I hope somebody knows something about it.

Mr. Hennie: I think when we talk about IT'S the main concern is that motorcycles are considered. You know, the thing that we're trying to avoid here is seven years down the road, when every car has employed all the new ITS technology and motorcycles are again an after-thought and they're not being picked up by back-up sensors or cruise control sensors or vehicles talking to each other or to law enforcement and rest stops or whatever and then we're left behind again. The reason why this needs to be an issue is to keep motorcycles and the small signature that they leave in mind when designing public transportation systems. Since it's such new technology, I don't think there's a lot of things that have gone wrong just yet, but this is an opportunity that we have to stay in front of the curve and make sure that motorcycles are indeed thought of when designing and implementing ITS. So I don't know that this is really a big problem yet, I think Steve touched on the biggest issues with the EZ Pass, where you put it and that's the big one right now but what else? What's next? You know EZ Pass is now generally accepted as now you have to have it

Ms. Bents: As a standard, sure.

Mr. Hennie: Yeah, it's a standard and motorcycles have been left behind so what's next that we can help bring motorcycles along with all the other traffic. Whatever that is, is it, something in the vehicle that we're going to stop people from going left of center so we're going to put a sensor on the road that signals an alarm bell in the car, well what do you do with motorcycles, you know? So, I guess this is how can we look in the future and see what's next?

Mr. Zimmer: There is another issue that we are dealing with right now and it's part ITS and part traffic control but there are lights out there with the magnetic sensor on the road that doesn't pick up the motorcycle. It doesn't have enough ferris material or whatever it may be that causes it to trigger that light, so motorcyclists sit at the stop light late at night for what could be forever, it seems like, until they finally get fed up and they run the light and then, of course, true enough, that's when the sheriff is sitting across the way and says, "oh, you just ran a light. So it's problematic and there are states right now that are addressing that and in legislation that allow motorcyclists, after a reasonable amount of time, to pass through that light when all conditions are safe. They don't like it because that in itself creates kind of a dangerous situation but it's the only alternative there is other than sitting there

Mr. Bloschock: Well, there's that twenty dollar item you can buy, the littlething that you can buy to hook on the bottom of your motorcycle.

Mr. Zimmer: That big magnet thing?

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah.

Mr. Zimmer: Yeah.

Mr. Bloschock: That will trip the magnet loop. I don't have one, I do what you do, I wait until it's safe and go.

Mr. Zimmer: But that's, I think, an ITS issue, as well, that we should deal with now.

Mr. Hennie: Well, the new technology now is moving away from magnets and going to occupancy sensors or video sensors, looking for motion instead of having the magnet strips that do wear out over time, and I'm sure these guys can tell you, they have to replace those so now they're moving, the ITS solution is with occupancy center of a section of the intersection or video that allows the light to change when it stays green as long as there is no one there and it changes depending on occupancy.

Mr. Bloschock: It's going to detect motion. It has software to detect motion, so once it detects motion it's going to, you know, query it, like a surveillance camera but it's software just detects something.

Mr. Hennie: But the question is, is that going to be able to pick up a motorcycle? How do they differentiate vehicle types?

Mr. Bloschock: It can pick up a person walking by.

Mr. Hennie: It would pick up, O.K.

Mr.: A deer

Mr. Hennie: That's O.K.

Mr. Halladay It does have to be tuned to the right setting to do that. I mean it can be detuned to only recognize a car or tuned up to be tightened and so forth but there are different, in addition to the video, there's also radar type detectors, signs and so forth . There's a range of things that are being tested as sensors in the market, but the observation about making sure that motorcycles are included in that picture, I think is a very valid observation.

Mr. Zimmer: And maybe that's as far as this crew can take it, is to recommend to Federal Highways and Department of Transportation that they consider motorcycles in the design of intelligent systems.

Mr. Bloschock: Back to the awareness thing. I think in the MSF class that I took that the first thing that he said was, "it's the job of the motorcyclist to see and be seen" and that's all about the awareness thing. That's where we're heading with this. Make a note, everybody else, make sure that motorcyclists are seen, whether that's by ITS or whatever it is, designers.

Mr. Hennie: Well, is there anything else, you know, that you guys, as Department officials and road engineers see, technology wise, being employed by cars, that motorcycles need to be cognizant of in the future? Kind of what's next, as far as vehicles communicating with each other, we can't really affect that here, but what about vehicles communicating with traffic sensors?

Mr. Halladay: From the U.S. DOT standpoint and the auto manufacturers and the states there's a mission called VII and it's all about establishing that link between the vehicle and the roadside, and the roadside then would connect to a network that would provide both private sector services and public sector services - mostly safety oriented and traffic management, congestion and so forth. So major manufacturers are part of the consortium from the auto manufacturers' side and are arriving at the communication protocols and what type of radio needs to be built into the car so it can communicate with the roadside. What type of services then do you have? My office happens to be a participant in cooperative intersection collision avoidance. How does that vehicle avoid violating a red light? How does that vehicle get information about approaching traffic curves or danger at a stop sign? There are a lot of scenarios there that are being worked out. What I don't know is the extent to which cycle manufacturers are part of that picture. Honda and some other foreign manufacturers are aware of it, but I'm just not sure if all the major motorcycle firms are part of that discussion. That's a big thing that's out on the horizon

Ms. Bents: Gerry's going to have to leave us. Gerry, thank you for your participation.

Mr. Halladay: We'll see you next time. Thank you, Gerry:

Ms. Bents: O.K. other topics of interest to you, something we haven't covered, something we haven't covered yet in sufficient depth? You guys have covered a lot of topics today; you've done very well. This is a point in the agenda where, I believe, we were going to summarize our discussion and consensus. We certainly did that for this morning's discussions. I have a couple of notes here, let me see if I can sort out what I've written down. With regards to barrier design, it was barriers of all types, roadside, acoustic, and so forth. There's some sort of review, research program, literature review, whatever it might be, to assess the state of the art in forgiveness for motorcycle crashes. What kind of barriers are most motorcycle friendly and whether there are new technologies that are being developed or have been developed in other areas? Does that kind of capture the sense of the group?

Mr.?: I think we touched on the link to the vendors, the private sector firms potentially and some of the activities that are going on internationally.

Ms. Bents: Industry, international, O.K. With regard to signage, there was some discussion on how you make the link to AASHTO where they're really not thinking about motorcyclists. We need to establish some sort of mechanism, perhaps, as a council, to develop communications with groups other than just Federal Highway because your charter is really to serve as an advisory group to Federal Highway. And Federal Highway, as Mike pointed out this morning, doesn't do everything, and so, to the extent that you have an interest in seeing change with other organizations, other venues, we have to think about how we can establish those kinds of links. What would be our plan there? And with regard to the surfaces, we talked about a little earlier this morning, sealants is an area of particular concern. So did I miss anything else that was a major topic that you'd like to see reflected in the report?

Mr. Maher: Do we want our own motorcycle lanes? Anybody? No? It doesn't mean that we would get any but I thought I'd try anyway.

Mr. Bloschock: Truckers have an authorization legislation for "truck only" lanes but even that has not yet been implemented anywhere in the country.

Mr. Maher: Motorcycle lanes and motorcycle speed limits?

Mr.?: Now you're talking.

Mr. Maher: Just get into operations on the infrastructure such as speed and other lanes.

Mr. ?: Lane splitting, in other words.

Mr. Bloschock: California, when you go to California he needs to know about that so if he ever goes to California"¦.

Mr.?: Lane splitting simply means that at a traffic light or an intersection where traffic is stopped or backed up, a motorcycle may proceed legally between the lanes of traffic and proceed to the front. It is legal in California. It's the only state in the Union that does that, that I know about.

Mr. Bloschock: We do it in Texas but it's not legal. (laughter)

Ms. Bents: Legal is the operative word there.

Mr.?: I mention the motorcycle owners, riders would think that's a good thing because they get preference but it is a dangerous thing?

Mr. Zimmer: There's mixed emotions about it. Part of the problem comes from changing the social attitudes of car drivers because "how come they get to go" that kind of attitude becomes apparent.

Mr. Bloschock: Because they can accelerate faster than you can

Mr. Zimmer: Because they can get out of the way.

Mr. Bloschock: That's right.

Mr. Zimmer: But as far as the motorcyclists go it's a benefit because in the era of air cooled engines they don't have a tendency to heat up and spend as much time in traffic heating up so it's better for the motorcycle to move forward and move through and go on and get back on the road and move through the air. It cuts down on congestion because we don't have motorcycles taking up traffic space and that sort of thing. So there are pluses and minuses about it, it's just a matter, in this country, of changing the social attitudes that motorists can accept that as a norm and not abnormal. It happens a lot in Thailand. Dave Thom has shown some videos about it. He did some studies over in Thailand. And showed, it was amazing,"¦there was a stop line for motorcycles, there was a stop line for 4 wheel vehicles, and the lights change and all these motorcycles and scooters and everything filter to the front. The light changes and they're gone, traffic moves along behind them and they are out of the mix.

Mr. ?: So there's a platoon of cyclists going forward making it a safer environment.

Mr. Zimmer: So, it's something that's out there, but because we don't have that acceptance of that here. But Calfornia is the only state that I know of that does some so"¦

Mr. Bloschock: And you have to be careful when you're in L.A. on the freeway and watch your lane position because they will also white line or lane split at speed. So while you're in a mix of traffic at 40 or 50 mph, the motorcycles come by. And they have to use their own judgment as to what speed their using to go faster.

Mr. Halladay: Is that also legal?

Mr. Bloschock: No, I don't think so. I've heard that it's legal; I just don't think so. When you go to L.A. make sure you watch for that.

Mr. Halladay: At speed? On the freeway?

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, at speed.

Mr. Zimmer: I wasn't sure it was at speed"¦

Mr. Bloschock: Yeah, you'll see that commonly in California. The local bunch are ready for it, but when you have a rental car and you're from out of town you've got to be ready for it.

Mr. Halladay: There's nothing unique about either the design or the width of those that make that possible in CA or not, it's just one of the laws and they're allowed.

Mr. Bloschock: Acceptance of an additional risk.

Mr. Zimmer: But that would be something that, if we look further down the road to, as motorcycles increase in usage and popularity, perhaps widening some there between the lanes and four wheel traffic so that motorcycles can filter through as a possibility. The way gas prices are going we need to encourage more and more people to be riding motorcycles anyway. They're easier on the infrastructure.

Mr. Bloschock: And I would agree that in Europe I've seen the same thing. And I've been in Europe as they actually can see the people waving the motorcyclists on to come on through, don't wait back in traffic, come on through to the head of the line. I don't think it's a law or a legal thing, it's just an issue or a cultural thing.

Ms. Bents: And lane splitting is included in the motorcycle crash causation study I want you to know. So we'll know a little more about it in a few years.

Mr. Halladay: I know, Kathy, you identified some of the pages in here [NAMS Report] and of course we have this passed out. Would there be anything valuable to take a quick look at"¦at some of those. I mean I don't want to go through it in detail, but if you've taken a look, I know you had some thoughts about this.

Ms. Van Kleeck: I think we pretty much covered everything.

Mr. Halladay: If there is anything that perhaps has fallen off the table that is part of the NAMS, now would be a time to recognize that. If not, then fine.

Mr. Hennie: Or maybe for the next one.

Mr. Halladay: And we can use that as an agenda / checking / process for next time. That's fine.

Ms. Bents: In anticipation of the next meeting, to the extent that you identify particular items of interest and you can let me know ahead of time, we'll make sure that those are reflected in the agenda. Now that we're starting to get into this process you all will be thinking about various things, so we'll be able to block out time to discuss the issues most important to you. Steve.

Mr. Zimmer: As we kind of move forward here, start coming up with ideas and different things that may pop into our heads, do you want us to communicate directly with you and then you will diseminate that or back and forth or how do you perceive the communications?

Mr. Halladay: I think we have a lot of options we could explore there. Fran will remain engaged with us, I believe, for the duration that we envision for the group. And engaged in a contract with Federal Highway. So, I don't know if we've set that protocol. Whether that would be myself, or you Fran, I think you've served that role. Or Mo Oliver from my office is a key person also that would be with me, from the Federal side. But, do you have any thoughts on that?

Ms. Bents: Do you have a preference, Mo?

Mr. Oliver: Right now, my initial take would be it'd be fine to have a filter and would name Westat. That would be great. That way you could manage some other things at the same time. That would be my initial preference.

Ms. Bents: We could try it that way and see if it works.

Mr. Halladay: If the members are comfortable with that I'm sure that Fran would be open with the communication and share it with others and there's nothing to stop anyone of us, the members, from sending a note out"¦identifying an issue. And I think that some of the thoughts I was going to head towards now are similar to what I think you're mentioning right now. Thinking about the issues, thinking deeper about some of the things we talked about today and how that might affect where we go with the next meeting and how deeply we get into it, how we all use the networks that your organizations represent.

Ms. Bents: And in your folders, of course you have contact information for everyone, and you all have my contact information. You don't have their [Feds] contact information, but I can get it to you. (Laughter)

Mr. Halladay: There's no need to be concerned. We're out there.

Ms. Bents: I made note of just a couple of action items, there may have been more. But Jeff you were going to get some examples of some motorcycle signs, so if you got those to me I could certainly make sure they were distributed to the group. And Mark you were going to talk to some designers about whether or not ramps are being shortened and report back on that.

Ms. Bents: Did we have other volunteers for an action item. I don't recall any, but did I miss anything.

Mr. Bloschock: Volunteers for what?

Ms. Bents: Somebody is going to look into something or another and report back to the group.

Mr. Bloschock: The next time, in fact, I'm going to come in with that tyre grip stuff. I'll get some samples and stuff so that folks can be aware of how inexpensive and quick it is to produce skid resistance on things that are too slick. Raise the awareness of that.

Ms. Bents: We'll need a volunteer then to run real fast across it to test it!

Mr. Bloschock: Gerry was a dirt rider right, so"¦

Mr. Maher (?): Not only motorcycles, it effects marathon runners too. Nobody saw that news article "¦.something splitting the marathon, I think it was in Los Angeles or something. And coming right to the finish line there was a decal advertising something - and the leader slid right under the finish line. His leg made it through the finish line so they did declare him the winner.

Mr. Bloschock: Posthumously

Mr. Maher (?): Uh, no. They had to take him to the hospital overnight I believe. But he was the winner. They believe it was because there was a decal (I don't know what it was). And he was holding up his hands, getting ready to break the tape, and slid under it. That's a perfect example of it's not just motorcycles.

? Is there a "¦pedestrian advisory council?

Ms. Bents: I was going to say, or a Marathon group, or some other group with which we may want to affiliate.

Mr. Halladay: We certainly incorporate pedestrians, but not necessarily running on an open road.

Mr. Hennie: Wouldn't that be illeagal to run. You always see on the highway, nothing under 50 cc.

Mr. Halladay: For interstate roadways there is restricted access, certainly. Open roadways, rural roadways and so forth, you share the road and certainly look for shoulders for the safety of pedestrians and bicycles that are vulnerable users.

Ms. Bents: Well we also had a spot for open public comment. I guess we don't need that. Well then, let's talk a little bit about next time. Does anyone have any thoughts? We talked about dates. Some time between March and May and I'll work on helping you organize that. We have some action items that we'll have some reports back on various things. In terms of reporting, Mike how will that work? Do we know - getting something back to the council - reports at the next meeting? I know I have a transcript and a final report coming to you. You have a report to the Secretary.

Mr. Halladay: I'm responsible for an annual report to the Secretary, not necessarily on each meeting I don't believe. So that would not be necessary for meeting by meeting, but it is something - a status report I get up annually. I'm not sure when that cycle is, I suppose when the charter was signed. I think we have, again, options that way. It's new to me. I'm willing, through our office, with Mo's assistance and certainly Fran and Westat to pull together the full transcript. And that will be available to anybody, including the public.I'm new to this too. I guess what I didn't admit and I mentioned to some of you. I'm not a rider. I do plan on taking the motorcycle rider safety course. I do want to get that endorsement. I haven't yet done that. I haven't had the opportunity, so I'm in a learning mode and I know that the community really values the experience of being out there. And I regret that that's one thing I don't bring to the table But I've been very encouraged by the interaction among the folks here today. I've learned a lot of those concerns. I've been aware of some of them. I attended some of the paneled conversations at NTSB most recently. Read some of the background material obviously through NHTSA and other sources. So I'm getting a better feeling for that. And I think as Fran said, sort of outlining the issues and where the priorities lie, I think has been the goal today. And I've been very pleased with the interaction, the respect if you will, the sticking to the issues, and really appreciate your participation. Thank you guys for all being here, contributing openly and I look forward to the next time we can get together. Anybody else for closing thoughts.

Mr. Bloschock: I took a couple of things away today. It's good to meet everybody. It's certainly an honor to serve here. It's got me thinking differently as a designer, even though I've been a motorcyclists for a long time. Just hearing the input from you all is to reinforce it and for that I really appreciate it. But this idea"¦I can't wait to get back to the web page. Because I think a place to park some motorcyclists comments only, motorcyclists only comments, I think is going to help. I'm just excited seeing how powerful that might be. We'll know soon because if our web site gets visited all the time because of people coming with complaints, we'll know. They usually don't complain more than once. Because the reason is when they complain on the website, it will go to an expert like myself or somebody else and it will come back to them in a formal memo, often signed by the governor. Where they're complaining about the misuse of state funds for something; they think we're funds. They get the memo from the governor. They usually decide, I think I just wasted some state funds so I won't complain anymore. But no, we take that very seriously. And that idea of having something on the website or having an 800 number is pretty powerful for motorcycle specific complaints. We'll see what happens on that.

Mr. Halladay: It's all about opening up lines of communication. I know that was one of the things we were uncertain about. The other thing I'm not so familiar with is public meetings. This meeting was announced and anybody is welcome to be part of it. We had an opportunity for the public to participate, but we didn't know who or how many. I wish perhaps a few more folks had been here, but that can happen next time. But I think that that communication is critical, and opening up those lines and breaking down those barriers between the motorcycle community and the designers, and what we can do to help that through this group is what it's all about.

Mr. Bloschock: When I see folks, when we get together, we communicate like this, like we often do at state DOT public meetings. You always know you did a good job when the public comes in and says, you know I came into this meeting today, I really wanted to hate you, but I'm having a really hard time doing it. It's what they'll tell you. Because you've explained to them your perspective and views. You've explained to them some of the federal rules and the stuff we have to do. And if they are having a hard time hating you at the end of the day, then you earned your pay that day.

Mr. Zimmer: I want to say thank you for the opportunity to be able to do this. Not only for me, but for the motorcyclists. In years past, it's always been us against them.

Mr. Killion: The bureaucrats and the bikers.

Mr. Zimmer: And it was a big dichotomy. It was very hard for us to get past so that we could get to some real solutions. And in the last 5 - 10 years, we've made some major strides forward and I'm real thankful for that because we can now get to the issues. We can actually do something about making things safer. So I think it's an important major step forward and I just want to say thank you and I appreciate it.

Ms. Van Kleeck: For those of you that don't know, we have just, in coooperation with NHTSA, as a followup to the NAMS, have just started a NAMS implementation website. And you might want to check that out as well. It's an open forum for people to chat, provide information, it's www.implementNAMS.org. If you're going to add something to your website, you probably want to look at the NHTSA website as well.

Mr. Zimmer: That's good that you brought that up Kathy because it's broken down by the different recommendations. The Haddon matrix, including road furniture, road design, those types of things, are listed there as well as part of the structure there. So there might be some information or comments that get made there that might be of benefit to us here too. So it's another resource for us to check out.

Ms. Van Kleeck: Well we certainly propose to check out your state DOT website to see if there's a link for reporting on there.

Mr. Halladay: [To Sean Maher] Please tell Ed that we welcome him in the group. Thank you for coming in his place.

Ms. Bents: I'd like to thank you all. You sure made my job easy today. You had a lot of great ideas and you're a great group with whom to work. So thank you all.

Mr. Bloschock: I think I'd like to recognize the facilitator though because otherwise without a facilitator we're all just in here yammering at one time. I appreciate that. (Clapping).