Australian Road Rider — August 2017

STORY & PICS: SPENCER LEECH

W

hen motorcycling laws

change, it rarely favours

the rider, so when I found

out about the tightening

licensing laws implemented by VicRoads, I was

fairly sceptical. It’s all part of the Motorcycle

Graduated Licensing System (MGLS), which

began in Victoria and is being rolled out in

various forms Australia-wide.

From an outside perspective, it may seem

like the government is just trying to make it

harder for new riders to get on the road but

it’s clear that the new system be er educates

motorcyclists on both roadcra and riding

technique. A more thorough rider education

system should, in turn, create safer and

smarter motorcyclists. So, if it’s implemented

correctly, I’m all for it.

To fi nd out what it now takes to get your

licence in Victoria, we ran through the course

from start to fi nish. We booked our courses

with Stay Upright. For those who aren’t

familiar, Stay Upright is a rider-training

organisation that caters for many facets of

rider education with a variety of road, track

and dirt courses on off er. Stay Upright has

facilities in Queensland, New South Wales, the

ACT and of course Victoria.

To get started, we booked the fi rst leg of the

new licence system: the learner course. Gone

are the days where you could a ain your Ls by

paying a few bucks, doing a lap around a block

of asphalt and maybe then reciting what’s

wri en on a Snellen eye chart from two metres

away. It’s now a two-day course in Victoria.

The learner course caters for any rider,

regardless of his/her experience, so it begins

with a lecture on roadcra. The instructors

at Stay Upright are real motorcyclists, down-

to-earth guys, so this wasn’t as tedious as I

expected. In fact, there was a lot of useful

information to be learned about lateral

positioning and line choice as well as

understanding some of the obscure road laws

applying to motorcyclists in Australia.

Fortunately, it’s not long before the

participants get to ride on the testing range.

It’s a two-day course, but most of that is spent

r Instructor Leigh Shields explains safe

line choice: enter wide, exit tight.

r Stay Upright uses Honda CB125Es for its learner course but participants are more than welcome to use their own bikes on the licence test.

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