Motorcycle test aimed at improving safety

When Jeff Myers of Tacoma took his motorcycle test five years ago, he passed it the first time. He’s failed the revamped test the state started giving Aug. 1 twice.

He hasn’t been told what caused him to lose the points needed to pass, but the only differences he’s noticed between the old and new tests are several turns instructors have asked him to make this time around.

Washington state has had more than 60 fatal motorcycle accidents so far this year.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department responded to its fifth fatal motorcycle wreck this year late last month, when Gig Harbor’s Ty Barnes left the road in the 5000 block of Reid Drive Northwest on a right-hand curve, hit a large rock and flipped. The 23-year-old JBLM airman did not have a motorcycle endorsement, sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said at the time.

Such curves are being targeted in the state’s new test.

A 2006 study done by the state’s Motorcycle Safety Taskforce began the work that led to the new test, state Department of Licensing spokesman Brad Benfield said.

The group found that about 60 percent of motorcycle fatalities in the state were at least partly the result of the driver erroneously leaving his or her lane – mistakes that are mostly curve-related, Benfield said.

The new test evaluates a driver’s ability to take curves at a proper speed without veering outside marked lines.

“It appears as though it’s not as easy a test as the other one,” Benfield said. “More people are having to take it more than once.”

But he said it’s too early to pin down any specific trends with the new exam.

Washington is the first state to implement the test for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, a national organization that promotes rider safety through training and education.

“We’re basically serving as the pilot for this test that they plan to push out nationwide starting next spring,” Benfield said.

Puget Sound Safety is one of the companies administering the new exam at its locations in Tacoma and Olympia. The Department of Licensing transferred testing to the state’s motorcycle training schools, also as of Aug. 1.

“Those states along the coast, especially the West Coast where we have very mountainous, very curvy roads, we’re having issues navigating those corners,” Puget Sound Safety president Bret Tkacs said. “We still do basic skills like breaking, swerving, … but we also have a curve now, so we can at least go, ‘Can you stay between the lines?’”

He said it’s too soon to tell if the new exam is tougher.

“That’s still in debate,” Tkacs said. “It’s a brand new test. The jury is still out on all of that, as to whether it’s more difficult or not.”

Myers said he plans to take the test at least one more time, but after that, he’ll consider selling his bike.

“If you can’t get a license for it, you can’t really ride it,” he said.