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FIM Position: INITIAL TRAINING AND LICENSING
Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme
In general High quality, cost effective initial rider training is probably the most important measure for improving motorcycle safety. Every European citizen who wants to start riding a motorcycle should have easy access to it. The present EU 3rd Driving Licence Directive focuses only on the regulatory framework, not even considering the content of training, only briefly commenting on the content of testing, and by doing that, ignoring the very purpose of training and testing. The present regulatory framework’s positive effects on motorcycle safety is undocumented and at the best questionable. An extensive evaluation is necessary. If training and testing becomes overly complicated and overly expensive, there is a real risk that citizens will choose to ride without licence, which is both illegal and extremely dangerous. How to improve initial rider training - Initial rider training must teach the skills, knowledge and attitude needed to be a safe rider, not just the skills needed to pass a licence test.
- Initial rider training should arrive from the EU/FEMA/FIM/ACEM Initial Rider Training Programme and be described in detail in an agreed, national curriculum for category A.
- The licence test is a quality assurance of the candidate's competence, meaning the minimum skills, knowledge and attitude needed to safely operate a motorcycle on public roads, and it is of great importance that the licence test is designed to do exactly that.
- Risk awareness and risk management should be part of the licence tests.
- The licence test should not expose candidates to peculiar exercises with little relevance to real‐life safe riding, the consequence being that perfectly competent candidates may fail the test, while questionable candidates, who have "learned the tricks", may pass.
- Instructors should ideally be practising riders and should have participated in an officially recognised instructor’s training programme arriving from the agreed, national curriculum for category A.
- As with instructors, examiners should ideally be practising riders and should have participated in an officially recognised examiner’s training programme derived from the agreed, national curriculum for category A.
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