Policing the roads - Bike Safe
I spent a rather enjoyable Sunday riding around with the Surrey motorcycle police as part of the Bike Safe programme that many police forces run across the country.
I can only imagine the confusion that some motorists must have felt seeing me fly past both them and a fully marked police rider as we practised overtaking. I even felt a bit sorry for one silly sod who seemed barely able to ride a motorbike and found himself and his expired tax disc in the middle of a big group of policemen.
The day was good fun despite the early tellings off from the officer observing me to stop speeding - both I and the other rider who spent the day with us found it very difficult to keep the bikes at low speeds especially on the more open roads - and generally doing things that we all do everyday in London, but which are not seen so often on rural Surrey roads.
I learnt quite a lot from the day and would definitely recommend it to anybody else who rides a motorbike and who would like a few tips on improving their riding ability.
The officer I spent the day with made some interesting points about how they police the roads. In particular, he emphasised that if you want to go speeding around the back roads where the national speed limit applies then they police won't be very interested, although if it goes wrong you'll end up in a pond or in a tree. But, they pay particularly close attention to speeding in the 30 and 40 limits - generally anywhere you might come into conflict with more vulnerable road users.
I can only imagine the confusion that some motorists must have felt seeing me fly past both them and a fully marked police rider as we practised overtaking. I even felt a bit sorry for one silly sod who seemed barely able to ride a motorbike and found himself and his expired tax disc in the middle of a big group of policemen.
The day was good fun despite the early tellings off from the officer observing me to stop speeding - both I and the other rider who spent the day with us found it very difficult to keep the bikes at low speeds especially on the more open roads - and generally doing things that we all do everyday in London, but which are not seen so often on rural Surrey roads.
I learnt quite a lot from the day and would definitely recommend it to anybody else who rides a motorbike and who would like a few tips on improving their riding ability.
The officer I spent the day with made some interesting points about how they police the roads. In particular, he emphasised that if you want to go speeding around the back roads where the national speed limit applies then they police won't be very interested, although if it goes wrong you'll end up in a pond or in a tree. But, they pay particularly close attention to speeding in the 30 and 40 limits - generally anywhere you might come into conflict with more vulnerable road users.
By 'low speeds' I presume that you mean 'legal speeds'?
ReplyDeleteSee you in court - one way or another.
BS could you just lay off motorists and motorcyclists for once, and concentrate on locking up scroats and other professional thieves and robbers ?
ReplyDeleteWhat Fras said.
ReplyDeleteI reckon motorists and motorcyclists (surely the same thing?) will be 'laid off' once they realise that the laws apply to them just as much as they apply to professional thieves and robbers.
ReplyDeleteBystander, yes I do mean legal speeds, that's why the officer kept telling me off ;) The PC wanted us to be dead on the speed limit rather than going a few MPH over the posted limit, which is actually how most riders I've come across were taught to ride! I remember being told to sit at 3 or 4MPH above the speed limit when I took the test as the examiner would prefer to see you do that than go to slowly!
ReplyDeleteThe roads we were on are very different to those I normally ride and I did find being on a big open country road with a speed limit of 30MPH (even 20MPH on some) to be quite difficult. I'm sure it's psychological but the bike does feel like it wants to speed up and it's a battle to keep it down. I'm sure that if I rode that sort of road more often I'd get used to it.