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Guzzimundi
Senior Member
260 Posts
[Mentor]
Palmeira, Coruna
Spain
Moto Guzzi
Breva 750
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 Posted - 03/04/2009 : 4:14 PM
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Guys,
Thanks much for your work, arguments, discussions, etc. Very edifying and simply excellent. Thank you so much for sharing. Incredible how politics just seeps into everything! Who are we to trust? When? How? |
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aidanspa
 Advanced Member
1458 Posts
[Mentor]
Omaha, NE
USA
Harley-Davidson
Heritage Softail
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Posted - 05/01/2009 : 2:01 PM
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According to today's Susan Carpenter blog in the LA Times, the much anticipated follow-up to the 1981 Hurt Study is dead in its tracks.
Data has been collected from the 53 crashes investigated in the Southern California pilot phase, yet it awaits an assessment of its efficacy. And the study is very short of cash, at least $2 million short, and addtional funding is uncertain.
Standing in for this study is MAIDS 2.0, the 100 motorcycle crashes that involved fatalities among the 921 crashes investigated a decade ago in the MAIDS study. |
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ST-rider
Starting Member
4 Posts
Memphis, TN
USA
Honda
ST1300A
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Posted - 11/02/2009 : 8:58 PM
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On October 5th, the DOT announced the study would start, http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/fhwa2809.htm.
About a week later, MSF announced they would not pay the matching funds http://msf-usa.org/index_new.cfm?pa...D000750D9B90
The reason MSF gave was that OSU http://otc.okstate.edu/index.html could not guarantee that the conditions MSF had stipulated for the grant would be met, chief among them the requirement that 900 to 1200 crashes be sampled.
Most experts (including Dr Samir Ahmed http://www.latimes.com/classified/a...935439.story and the DOT in its initial study requirements document said that 900 or more is needed for good numbers.
The current situation is that the study is proceeding, with a probably 300 crashes sampled.
The study is costing $8000 to 9000 per crash sampled, eight times the (inflation adjusted) $1000 or so Hurt cost, four times what Maids cost (using the exact same methodology) and about a third more than what OSU was saying earlier this year.
This is a scandal. The money is going to various research organizations, including Dynamic Science http://www.exodyne.com/DSI%20Pages/DSI%20Home.html who is slated to do the research, and Jim V. Ouellet, an original Hurt researcher now a crash investigator and expert witness, who charges 250 to 275 per hour, according to the Consultants Bureau http://www.kts-cb.com/. Ouellet is working as a consultant in quality assurance for the project.
The work in Hurt and Maids was done largely by graduate students, who are a lot less expensive than the professionals hired for this study.
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DataDan
Standard Member
198 Posts
[Mentor]
Central Coast, CA
USA
Honda
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Posted - 11/02/2009 : 11:36 PM
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Thanks for the info ST-rider. We had another discussion about this recently in the thread OSU Motorcycle Crash Research
I got the impression from reading various accounts that the OK Transportation Research Center was responsible for gold-plating the project, which had driven the cost up so high. I wasn't aware that outsiders were hitching up to the gravy train too. |
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ST-rider
Starting Member
4 Posts
Memphis, TN
USA
Honda
ST1300A
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Posted - 11/03/2009 : 5:57 AM
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The impression I got is that OSU got the project as pork courtesy of Sen. Daniel Inhofe, who intervened to grab it in 2005. OSU does not have any bike competence, and they stumpeed a professor, Samir Ahmed, with the job. He is not a biker, far as I can tell.
http://www.bikesafer.com/petition_resources.html has details.
Cost comparisons here
http://www.bikesafer.com/blog/2009/...arisons.html
People identified as working for the study http://www.bikesafer.com/blog/2009/...n-study.html
It's not so much that OSU is gold-digging, they seem to be schlepping the standard 20% vig that any university would take off the top of all research grants. The real problem is that there are a lot of highly qualified and expensive research outfits in the LA area, including Dynamic Research and Jim Ouellet, and Dr. Ahmed has chosen to hire these platinum level guys and pay their rack rates. Additionally, although the OECD methodology specifies a QA sampling rate of 10 percent (see http://www.bikesafer.com/blog/2009/...plained.html), Dr Ahmed is insisting that his $250 per hour consultants do QA at the rate of 70 percent. That's not QA, that's management, which OSU is supposed to be providing. And Westoc is being brought in to do day-to-day project administration as well.
This is a far cry from what you expect when you hire a university to do research. If you want to hire platinum-level outside consultants to do your research, hire them directly, negotiate a discount or a cost-plus deal, rather than paying the ambulance-chaser rack rate and a university to act as a middle man.
When I talked to Dr Ahmed, he seemed unfamiliar with the Maids project and did not recall the very notable flubbing of the ABS research findings, for example. He has had since 2005 to do his homework, which is basically to read Hurt, Maids and the OECD methodology literature.
I fear that the real culprit is incompetence, and an attempt at OSU to throw money (our tax money) at the problem.
Since Hurt left USC and his department was closed down and basically moved to the Head Protection Research Lab (which would have been inappropriate for this study due to the helmet law angle), it is claimed that there are no university departments with motorcycle crash competence, but Oregon State University with their TEAM OREGON bike training partnership would seem like a good place to start.
There's a petition about the study here http://www.bikesafer.com/petition.html, you should sign it. Bikers have lives staked on this process. |
Edited by - ST-rider on 11/03/2009 1:54 PM |
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