We cannot identify any specific safety benefits that will accrue from forcing front numberplates onto motorcycles. Neither have any been provided from government.

All that has been provided are motherhood speed statements of general applicability to all road users.

It is admitted that there are some motorcyclists who speed. Equally, there are many more other vehicle drivers who speed. LINK TO “speeding” on safety site.

Nearly half of all motorcycle crashes are caused by other drivers and the bulk of these are at intersections.

The bulk of motorcycles that hit cars, do so at intersections.

36% of all motorcycle crashes are single vehicle crashes and about one third of these are due to faulty road conditions that affect motorcycles but don't affect cars.

Road Design Guides are available for motorcycle specific issues but not widely implemented, although Guides for other forms of vehicle as well as pedestrians and bicycles have been.

The coding of single vehicle motorcycle crashes into the RTA crash database, defines them as “speeding” because they fell over, even if the road surface was faulty. There are other issues here and speeding in excess of the speed limit is an undefined factor because of confusion with the automatic speed coding on entry to the RTA database.

Most single vehicle motorcycle crashes occur at low speed in built up areas, where the rider is not exceeding the speed limit, but regarded as travelling at "excess speed for the conditions" because they slid or skidded before falling over.

We simply do not accept the raw data as representative of riders exceeding the speed limit, which is the only reason given for the demand for front plates.

When we look at fatalities alone, we discover about half on straight roads and half on curves. We know something of problems at intersections on both curved and straight roads, but what about curves away from intersections? Rider skill and road condition may well turn out to be the prime factors, but we don't know this, or the proportion actually speeding in excess of the speed limit, because of a lack of systematic crash investigation for motorcycle crashes, so this strategy of fitting front number plates is just an inadequately researched guess.

We do know that a number of fatalities are as a result of excess speed, but it is difficult to reconcile these crashes with a direct link to the benefit of a front numberplate.

Improving road conditions is proven to reduce crashes. Any crash on a motorcycle can have severe consequences because of the hostile roadside environment, which is a factor in over 60% of casualty crashes from motoryclces. Fitting a front numberplate will not improve the roadside environment.