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Fitting Hazard Perception into a Motorcycle Training Programme: The Trainer’s Perspective
How many motorcycle trainers dislike riding a bike themselves? We think the number is likely to be very low, if not zero. Trainers tend to be passionate enthusiasts who are keen to pass on that passion to the next generation. They also want their students to be safe on the road, and hazard perception assessments and motorcycle training are methods to improve the safety of young riders.
Read our blog below to learn more about motorcycle training and why hazard perception is a key component to a successful training programme.
The importance of hazard perception in motorcycle training
Hazard perception is the ability to spot dangers on the road in sufficient time to mitigate risk and avoid a collision. There are lots of international studies which show that hazard perception tests can differentiate between safe and less-safe road users, and yet more studies of hazard perception training which demonstrate how this skill can be improved. Trained car drivers have even been shown to have fewer collisions 12 months after hazard perception training compared to a control group. For this reason alone, it makes sense to include hazard assessment and training as part of general motorcycle training.
It has also been found that training riders in hazard perception will not only improve their safety on the road, but it will improve their performance on the DVSA hazard test. For those students who fail certain clips, this helps trainers identify and mitigate the gaps in their trainees’ progress towards becoming a safe and competent rider.
Why does motorcycle training often not include hazard perception?
Despite the importance of hazard perception training, many motorcycle trainers do not provide this specialist training to their students. Some of the most common reasons for this choice include:
1.Trainers don’t need to provide specific hazard perception training as there’s plenty of apps and online tests that students can find.
Certainly, there are a lot of apps out there, but some are better than others. The companies that make these apps do not know exactly how the DVSA test works as the finer details are kept secret to prevent students from trying to cheat the test. The best apps approach hazard perception as a skill for life, rather than a strategy for passing your test.
New students will find it very difficult to identify the good apps from the not-so-good, though trainers should be able to spot the best ones a mile off. For this reason, we argue that motorcycle training should include hazard perception training rather than leaving students to choose a random app in their mobile app store. Also, the learning benefits from taking a hazard test are strongest if the student can discuss the outcome with their trainer.
2.CBT students aren’t required to pass the DVSA hazard test.
True, but then we don’t want to train riders to just pass their test; we want to keep them alive and safe on the roads. Trainers owe it to their students to provide hazard perception practice and training, regardless of the stage they are at in their motorcycling journey. CBT students may not yet need to pass the hazard perception test, but they are perhaps the most in need of hazard perception training. We should ideally train to the need rather than train for the test.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have older riders taking advanced qualifications. Surely, these riders do not need hazard perception practice and training? While it is true that highly experienced road users will have developed better hazard skills than their less experienced counterparts, research studies show that even highly experienced car drivers benefit from hazard perception training which suggests that even advanced motorcyclists should benefit too.
3.Motorcycle trainees should learn about hazards while on the road.
It’s hard to disagree with this one. Learning in the real world has many benefits over classroom or online training. Any form of training that is not given in-situ is essentially going to suffer from a lack of realism, which dilutes the training benefit and can reduce trainee engagement. Certainly, this is how we would normally develop our hazard skills – through years and years of on-road experience. But this is where the problem lies with this argument.
Paradoxically, we are hoping that riders can experience lots of dangerous events on the road over a period of years, but not have a crash while their hazard perception skills are still developing. During training, the average rider or driver is unlikely to encounter lots of hazards, which is why newly qualified riders and drivers do not have good hazard perception skills. For this reason, we argue that hazard perception practice and training is the only way to expose new riders to a wide range of dangers in complete safety. Thus, for ethical and pragmatic reasons, hazard perception tests have a definite role to play in motorbike training.
4.Rider safety isn’t just about pressing a button as quickly as possible.
Again, another point we cannot argue with! Hazard perception is just one part of a much wider process that includes general visual scanning, risk management, and response selection when a hazard does occur. It’s difficult to cram all of these elements into a test without an extremely expensive simulator, and even then, students will question the realism. Hazard perception tests can include some extra elements, such as asking riders to decide how to behave in the face of an imminent hazard, or how much risk they are willing to take in a certain scenario.
However, these tests are not supposed to provide a holistic training experience, that is what the trainer is for. These hazard resources are primarily intended to provide the trainers and students with tools to improve specific aspects of their riding. To get the best of these tools, they should be integrated into a wider motorcycle training framework by the training provider.
5.There are no readily available hazard resources that are specific to motorcycle training.
Another truth! All hazard perception tests tend to be filmed (in the case of video) or programmed (with CGI clips) from the perspective of the car driver. Cars are the most prevalent vehicle on the roads, so this makes sense up to a point. There is also the argument that a lot of hazard perception is transferable between vehicles. So just because you are watching a clip as if from the point of view of a car driver, it doesn’t mean it won’t benefit you when riding a motorcycle.
The problem is that some hazards are very specific to the vehicle that you are driving or riding. For instance, you will not find a filtering hazard clip in the DVSA test. Also, the vehicle you are in, changes the way that people behave around you when on the road. The most obvious example of this can be seen in videos taken from fire appliances while driving on blue lights, some of the behaviours exhibited by other drivers when faced with a fire appliance on call are quite out of the ordinary. The same happens when comparing motorcycle and car video footage. Cars appear more likely to pull out from side roads and often seem oblivious to the presence of a rider. We suggest that every road user deserves a hazard test that is specific to their chosen vehicle, to ensure that students see the same sort of behaviour from other road users that they will find on the road. However, if we offer motorcycle training to the standard of car drivers in hazard perception, that may not be enough.
Fortunately, hazard perception as a field is always developing. For the first time, we now have a motorcycle-specific hazard that is available to users and trainers. Developed by Esitu Solutions, working with the National Young Rider Forum, and supported by the Road Safety Trust, we now have hi-definition video clips filmed from real bikes on real roads. Training providers can access the test through our online platform, and see exactly which clips their riders answered correctly, and which clips they got wrong. This can then feed into future on-road training sessions.
If you are a motorcycle trainer and would like to access the new motorcycle hazard test, please get in touch with Esitu Solutions, and help your students develop their hazard spotting skills the safe and easy way, without having to experience each near-crash first hand!
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