Motorcycle Deaths Are Rising Globally. Safe Speeds Are the Answer.
By Renan Carioca and Fabrizio Prati
In just a decade, powered two- and three-wheelers have nearly tripled globally. While this category encompasses a huge variety of vehicles, motorcycles and mopeds represent a large share of that increase. This trend is accompanied by a significant rise in fatal and injury crashes, where motorcyclists are the victims, but also crashes where they pose danger to other users, especially pedestrians. Speeding is a major contributing factor to those crashes, and street design is a fundamental tool to make them safer for all users — including motorcyclists.
This explosion in popularity is happening around the world, with countries in Africa going from a relatively small fleet of under five million in 2010 to an astonishing 27 million in 2022; countries in Latin America, where motorcycles have been an important mode of transportation for decades, seeing high increases; and similar booms in countries in South and Southeast Asia, where mopeds, in particular, have been ubiquitous for decades.
People who ride motorcycles often do so because they find it the most convenient and comfortable way to get around. This is particularly the case where public transit is infrequent or unreliable, journeys using transit require too many transfers, or cycling is not safe, comfortable, or convenient because of the lack of a comprehensive, protected, and well-connected cycling infrastructure network is not available.
Mopeds and motorcycles present themselves as an affordable alternative to cars in cities that have been designed for decades to prioritize cars, favoring high traffic capacity and accommodating high speeds. In this context, motorcycles provide reliable access to opportunities, help businesses run, and serve many other functions of life in cities.
However, traffic fatalities and injuries involving motorcyclists are on the rise: 1.2 million people died in traffic crashes in 2021, with powered two- and three-wheelers representing the highest share of those deaths among all users and, in some contexts, accounting for nearly half the traffic fatalities.
Motorcyclists are exposed to high risk while posing a risk to other users.
Motorcyclists are a unique, often overlooked subset of road users. While motorcycles can reach high speeds, often comparable to car speeds, motorcyclists are not protected by a shell, like car occupants. And, even though helmets and other protective gear can help reduce the risk of fatality, motorcyclists are still highly exposed to impact, considering the mass and speeds of other motorized vehicles as well as their own.
But unlike other unprotected users, motorcyclists also pose a risk to pedestrians, cyclists, and even other motorcyclists. Though typically much lighter than cars, motorcycles weigh enough to cause severe injuries and fatal crashes.
Speed plays a major role in increasing the severity of a crash, as the kinetic energy of a crash increases exponentially with vehicle speed. A vehicle crashing at 60km/h (37 mph) delivers four times more kinetic energy on impact than if it was at 30km/h (19 mph).
As a consequence, many cities have found that motorcyclists frequently die in traffic crashes, and are also likely to be involved in crashes that kill others, especially pedestrians. In Bogotá, the latest road safety reports indicate that motorcyclists are both the users with the highest fatality count and those with the highest involvement in pedestrian fatalities, even though they represent a small share of the trips in the city.
Why additional action is needed
A significant portion of the debate around road safety involving powered two-wheelers focuses on policy and legislation solutions (such as helmet-use laws and vehicle regulation), mass media campaigns, enforcement, and other forms of influencing safe behavior from motorists.
While these initiatives have contributed to reducing injuries and deaths, they still do not address a key characteristic that makes motorcycles and mopeds dangerous, especially for other users: their ability to develop high speeds, even on congested streets. Combined with their small profile and ability to ride in close proximity to other modes and each other, this leads to high-risk conflicts between motorcyclists and other users — including motorists, other motorcyclists, cyclists, and pedestrians — often resulting in a high number of injuries and fatal crashes.
As a response to that factor, “motorcycle lanes” — facilities dedicated to separating motorcyclists from other users — were implemented initially in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, where motorcycles and mopeds were given exclusive and separate lanes, mainly in rural highways and similar exurban contexts. Following some limited preliminary road safety findings in these corridors showing promising results, similar facilities have been tested in urban contexts in Latin America.
The city of São Paulo, Brazil, implemented motorcycle lanes on two major corridors in 2006 and 2010 to make streets safer for powered two-wheel riders. However, in 2013 and 2014, the facilities were removed due to increases in injuries and fatalities at the sites. Similar examples can be observed in other cities, where motorcycle lanes were removed a few years after their implementation.
Despite a lack of robust evidence of any positive impact, motorcycle lanes and similar facilities have returned to the motorcycle safety discussion, especially in Latin America. Several major cities are planning pilots, including São Paulo, which implemented a new corridor in 2022 and announced plans to expand the motorcycle-dedicated network to 220 km (137 miles).
Streets designed for all users are better for everyone — including motorcyclists
Decades of street design that prioritized cars over people have made speeding a major road safety risk factor, often cited as the leading contributor to death and serious injury on the world’s roads. In road safety, for many years, the priority has been given to making drivers and car occupants safe, overlooking unprotected users. This approach, focused on one user in isolation, must not be repeated for powered two-wheelers.
Instead, designing streets for all users is proven to make cities safer, healthier, more sustainable, and more vibrant. An important component of this approach is designing streets for safer speeds: first, setting speed limits that are compatible with the human body’s limit to withstand impact and adequate to the immediate context, and second, designing the street to prevent or deter motorists from driving above that speed limit.
This approach can help reduce the need for enforcement. It also has co-benefits such as reducing noise pollution and improving conditions for walking and cycling which have proven public health benefits.
Fortaleza, Brazil’s fourth-largest city, found that discouraging speeding through design leads to safer streets for all users when it transformed over 170 km (105 miles) of corridors. Beyond reducing speed limits from 60 to 50 km/h (37 to 31 mph), reflected on signs and markings, streets were redesigned with narrower lanes, new opportunities for pedestrian and vehicle crossings, and new or upgraded cycling infrastructure, among other elements.
A study of the first 50 km (30 miles) of street redesigns found that:
- Traffic fatalities were reduced by 68% for all users and 78% among crashes involving motorcyclists;
- Injury crashes were reduced by 19% both for all users and for crashes involving motorcyclists;
- Pedestrian crashes were reduced by 30% both for all users and for crashes involving motorcyclists.
Cities must address speeding by choosing speed limits that are adequate to the urban context and ensuring streets are designed to reflect those speeds. It is also fundamental to ensure that safer modes such as public transit and cycling are safe, convenient, comfortable, and affordable to reduce demand for motorcycles and shift riders to safer and more sustainable modes.
The global demand for motorcycles and mopeds only continues to grow, in part due to inefficient transportation systems and cities overdesigned for car use. While they may be faster or more convenient than public transit or bicycles in many cities, their popularity is also associated with a growing road safety crisis, where powered two-wheelers are both exposed to and pose a high risk to other users. Cities must address speeding by choosing speed limits that are adequate to the urban context and ensuring streets are designed to reflect those speeds. It is also fundamental to ensure that safer modes such as public transit and cycling are safe, convenient, comfortable, and affordable to reduce demand for motorcycles and shift riders to safer and more sustainable modes.
Renan Carioca is a Research Manager at the Global Designing Cities Initiative, helping the team stay on the cutting edge of street design. Before joining GDCI, he worked on road safety and sustainable mobility projects with different cities in Latin America, and as a transportation engineer at the Municipality of Fortaleza.
Fabrizio Prati is the Director of Design and Research at GDCI. He oversees the street design work across GDCI’s programs, such as the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety. He is one of the co-authors of the Global Street Design Guide, and his work spans cities in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
This article was originally published in Transportation Alternatives’ Vision Zero Cities Journal as part of the 2024 Vision Zero Cities conference.
