Case study of the real contents delivered in French motorcycle schools

Samuel Aupetit 0 1 Jacques Riff 0 1 Stphane Espi 0 1 Olivier Buttelli 0 1 0 O. Buttelli Laboratory in System Engineering , Mechanics and Energetic, University of Orlans , UPRESEA, 12 rue de Blois site Galile, BP 6744, 45067 Orlans Cedex 2, France 1 J. Riff Motor Activity and Psycho Physiological Adaptation Laboratory, University of Orlans , AMAPP, 2 alle du Chteau, BP 6237, 45062 Orlans Cedex 2, France Purpose This study is concerned initial motorcycle training delivered in motorcycle schools in France. Novice motorcyclists are a particularly vulnerable group of road users in Europe and in France. However, scientific attempts to achieve a better understanding of their behaviors have been limited. The potential value of studying initial motorcycle training, both for research purposes and with regard to public policy, is readily apparent. The aims of this paper are to describe the real educational content of training in motorcycle schools and analyze to what extent this content is related to riding after licensing. Methods A case study of all the training process of one trainee (38 hours) was carried out in real world. Audiovisual recordings and interview data of the rider and instructors were collected at each session. This study was supplemented by ethnographic observations of the educational content provided in three motorcycle schools throughout the instructors' working days. Results The results that merged from both studies show (1) the riding skills that were fostered (i.e. control skills, and especially emergency skills, in stable and restricted environments) and undervalued (i.e. hazard perception skills, everyday skills) during initial training, and (2) the poverty of observed training settings: learners spend almost all their training time riding in the same setting that is used in the test. In addition to being repeated to excess, these settings are quite different from the real traffic. Conclusions These results are discussed regarding the scientific literature on motorcycle education. The conclusion presents the implications of these results for public policy in order to design a future rider training system. - The risks associated with riding powered two-wheelers are currently a major public health issue in Europe: motorcyclist mortality has been increasing since 1996 [1]. In France, the risk for motorcyclist to be killed is one the most important in European countries (with Italy and Greece): motorcycles account for 1 % of motorized traffic but 40 % of injured road users and almost 20 % of fatalities [2]. These worrying data are especially extreme for novice riders (those who have held a licence for less than 2 years): one in five crash-involved motorcycles in France has been registered for under 1 year [3]. The potential value of studying initial motorcycle training (i.e. pretest training), both for research purposes and with regard to public policy, is readily apparent in France but also in Europe, as it may be partly responsible for the behaviour of novices and their accident rates [4, 5]. The quality of initial rider training in EU countries is currently called into question and needs significant improvements [6, 7]. The aim of the work presented here is thus to characterize the educational content of motorcycle training in real world during the initial training given in French motorcycle schools. This investigation seeks to provide some answers to the hitherto unanswered questions: what is actually taught in initial motorcycle training? To what extent this content is related to riding after licensing? 1.1 The main tendencies of studies of motorcycle training Across the EU, initial rider training programmes vary enormously from Member State to Member State: from virtually non-existent to extensive, compulsory to voluntary, and cheap to expensive. The cost of training ranges from 400 to 3600 Euros [6]. Elsewhere in the world, there are major differences in training contents and the riding tests that validate them, and variations even exist within the same country, e.g. the United States and Australia [8]. Two kinds of studies involving motorcycle training can be identified: (a) studies that test the effectiveness of the curriculum and (b) studies that attempt to identify new educational content for motorcycle training. Research into motorcycle training1 mostly tests the effectiveness of the curriculum on the basis of the accident data for motorcyclists who have followed this curriculum and those who have not. The results tend to show that trained and untrained motorcyclists have the same risk of being involved in an accident [911]. Some research has attempted to demonstrate the effectiveness of training on risk level [12, 13]. Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain this ineffectiveness: (1) training focuses too much on driving skills and not enough on the cognitive and perceptive mechanisms associated with them [14], (2) the psychological characteristics of trainees are not sufficiently taken into account because most accidents are not due to a lack of driving skills but to deliberate behaviour [8], (3) training may tend to increase motorcyclists self-confidence and not their ability to make assessments [15], (4) training rhythms are too intense to allow the stabilization and the retention of the acquired skills [16, 17]. The findings of these researches must be qualified in view of the fact that the experimental conditions are not always sufficiently controlled and the effectiveness of training should not be measured just by the number of accidents experienced by those who have undergone it [8]. The modernization of motorcycle training and licensing has recently become one of the European Unions topics for concern in the area of transport and road safety. For example, the main objective of the Initial Rider Training project, completed in 2007, was to develop a unified approach towards initial motorcycle training in Europe. A panel of five experts in motorcycle training has identified four content blocks (theory, motorcycle control, interactions with traffic, e-coaching) that are made up of knowledge and skills that trainees must be taught. At a national level, each country is now considering a radical modification of its current training and licensing, based on models originally developed for car driving (e.g., the GDE matrix [18]). For example, the new Norwegian motorcycle licensing system is 1 For a complete review see [8]. organized around three main ideas [19]: developing educational tools in order to encourage trainee self-evaluation at each stage of training, bringing into balance the teaching of cognitive and motor skills and, last, developing hazard perception in traffic conditions rather than teaching emergency skills. Overall, the above research shows the limits of existing curricula, provides explanatory hypotheses for this ineffectiveness and proposes interesting educational possibilities. However, these advances do no (...truncated)