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Things have been hectic for me over the last few months in trying to achieve some personal goals as well as pursuing Club matters. But at last the Rider Development Program is ready to be implemented.

The process so far has consisted of seeking expressions of interest from 45 rider training providers nation wide, and tenders from the 5 companies who expressed interest.

All the tenderers were of good repute and would have been very capable of providing a good service to our Club. Based on the information provided by the tenderers, the National Committee unanimously decided to contract Roadsense Advanced Motorcycle Techniques to deliver a fully road based Risk Management course. We considered the program they are offering us is most suited to our members considering our ages, and the touring and social style of our riding.

More information about Roadsense and administrative arrangements for the program are included in the insert in this edition. In the meantime, I have already written to Groups and Branches to get the ball rolling.

I am firmly of the view that all of us will benefit significantly from the Rider Development Program, regardless of how long, short or varied our individual riding experiences are. In the interests of road safety, both for ourselves, our pillions, and other road users, I heartily encourage all members to take up this program.

On the subject of wire rope barriers, the extensive use of this type of road safety barrier is not going to go away, certainly not in the short term, principally because it is viewed as being very cheap and effective for cars and trucks.

In many cases it is better for us than no barrier at all, e.g. medians, where it will protect us from head on crashes, and on steeper roads where a drop off the edge is not desirable.

We continue to push for installation of more motorcycle friendly types of barrier, but in the meantime, something is better than nothing in a lot of circumstances. Fortunately there are minimal reports of crashes involving wire rope barriers and motorcyclists in Australia. My recommendation to you is that when riding near wire rope barriers, slow down and give yourself as much buffer space as you can.

While on this subject, the NSWMCC, including the Ulysses Club, recently attended a meeting of the NSW Consultative Committee which includes the RTA Rider Training Unit, the RTA Road Safety Unit, the NSW Transport minister's adviser and motorcycle industry representatives. Out of our discussions on wire rope barriers, a subcommittee has now been formed to discuss removal of installations that are outside the RTA's own guidelines, and to pursue our cause on wire rope barriers.

The TV commercial to promote awareness of motorcycling in the community, first mooted as part of the Celebration Ride in January 1996, is now being produced. To finalise this project, funds raised at the Celebration Ride are being used and are being supplemented with a further contribution from our Club which was initially pledged in 1996.

Additional funding is still being sought to purchase prime time screening. This TV commercial is consistent with our role on the Federal Office of Road Safety Consultative Committee (CONCOM), in that one of CONCOM's objectives is to encourage drivers to adopt safe and responsible driving practices in relation to motorcyclists.

The CONCOM Working Party on Safety Values has been developing a good rider code, as requested of us by the Federal Minister for Transport, John Sharp, following his removal of the requirement for hard wired on headlights.

Rather than approach this guide from the perspective of the motorcyclist only, we have developed a document that addresses issues from both a motorist's and motorcyclist's perspective.

This is a similar principle to that used in the successful FORS billboard campaign conducted in 1996, and achieves the objective of making the code more palatable to motorcyclists, i.e. the responsibility is not all ours, and will further help motorists' awareness of motorcyclists' behaviour as well as promoting some better driving practices.

Enough from me!

Robyn

SECRETARY'S REPORT

Membership continues to grow and member number 13281 was issued at the end of July, giving us an estimated 9670 financial members.

At the time of my report in the last Riding On about 1400 members had failed to renew. Although we said we wouldn't, we sent out reminder letters which resulted in approximately half renewing, leaving 744 members who have not renewed, about the same percentage of total membership as last year. 88 of those were not at the same address on file and were not contactable.

So, of those who are due to renew, up to 50% of us, folks, you and me, are forgetting that the 'trigger' for renewing our membership is the Expiry date on the Riding On fly sheet, which is the same as the expiry date on our membership card. I guess we are all Growing Old Forgetfully, and it is every three years after all.

That time of the year is approaching so please keep your eye on the ball (and the fly sheet) to save us the trouble (and expense) of preparing all those reminders.

We have had a few delays in getting the home page going on the internet, however we are now reasonably confident that the site will be up and running by the time you read this (this is what I said last time). The address will be http://www.ulysses.org.au.

As you will have seen elsewhere in the magazine, Riding On at last has an email address, ridingon@ozemail.com.au , as we don't all have the same software, please send any contributions in as text files or as straight email. Your software will let you save documents as text files and John can drop them into Riding On format.

Most PC files, e.g. *.doc files are not compatible with our Power Mac based publishing system.

Safe Riding!

Ted Richards

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