University academics have been enlisted in an effort to evaluate how the north’s roads can be made safer for motorcyclists.
The Scottish Government has awarded Robert Gordon University funding for the potentially life-saving study.
It will study motorcycle-specific road safety initiatives in conjunction with Road Safety North East Scotland and engage with motorcyclists themselves.
The financial backing from Transport Scotland’s road safety evaluation fund will enable academics to review motorcycle-related road safety approaches dating back over the past 20 years.
The research will look at both local authority and police initiatives to measure and evaluate their effectiveness.
Caroline Hood is a lecturer in sociology at RGU and will lead the project.
He said: “I’m delighted the north-east has been successful in securing funding in the first round of applications for this new national fund.
“Our initial work attracted both national and international interest from road safety professionals and the funding grant will now allow our research to move forward, with more detailed engagement with motorcyclists being planned in the months ahead.”
The fund was launched in June 2019 and is open to a wide variety of organisations involved in road safety, providing them with financial support to evaluate initiatives.
Head of Transportation at Aberdeenshire Council and chairman of RSNES, Ewan Wallace, added: “With local authority and partner organisation budgets under ever increasing pressure, the ability to access national funding such as the new fund is a very welcome development.
“The North-east has been an active participant in a variety of motorcycle-related road safety initiatives, both local and national, over many years, and the opportunity to now review these in some detail is a very useful exercise.
“We also have to be mindful that at the end of 2020, new Scottish road casualty reduction targets will be set for the period until 2030, so any learning we can gain from this research will be timely as we start to consider our future priorities.
“Our partnership work with RGU is an exciting new approach in local road safety activity and I look forward to our relationship developing, with the hope that it can benefit wider road safety approaches.”
