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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 w