Biker deaths in spotlight

MOTORISTS travelling on the roads of rural North Yorkshire would have come across some gruesome scenes last summer, during a period where motorcycle tragedies happened with alarming regularity.

Fifteen bikers were killed in England’s largest county in 2013, a 200 per cent increase on the previous year, with the majority dying between the start of May and the end of September.

The troubling rise, thought to be linked to last year’s good weather, has prompted a renewed focus on biker safety from police and safety authorities in North Yorkshire ahead of this summer, when the county will be jointly hosting the Tour de France Grand Départ and its roads are expected to be busier than ever.

With 70 per cent of the fatal crashes caused by rider error, Tim Madgwick, North Yorkshire Police’s deputy chief constable, is battling to persuade bikers to drive with more consideration.

He says the failure of many motorcyclists to fully get to grips with the power of their vehicles on the increasingly popular roads, often riding in a manner more suited to the race track, can have horrific consequences.

“If you take a racing line up in the Dales, and you have a tractor coming towards you as we have had several times last year, you get motorcyclists decapitated,” he says. “Race tracks have run-off areas and lots of safety devices, the Dales is full of dry stone walls, farmers going about their business.

“Our roads are busier than they have ever been and we are potentially going to have one of the most exciting summers ever with more and more people on the roads. It is not just about the bikers.

“I think it is a psychological contract with their family, a contract with the communities they are going through, and would they want their elderly mother or father to come across the scene and deal with something only professional paramedics would normally have to deal with?”

Analysis of the deaths over the year shows that bikers most likely to be involved were men aged between 40 and 59, riding high-powered bikes over 500cc. Of the 15 motorcyclists who died, only five were from North Yorkshire and the same number were from West Yorkshire, with a high number also coming from the more urban Cleveland police force area.

The sky-high death toll from last year includes three separate fatal crashes in one week in August, on roads around Helmsley, Ripon and North Duffield. In the first of these, a biker was killed after overtaking at speeds of about 130mph and crashing head-on into a car, also killing its driver.

As well as being the chairman of the 95 Alive road safety partnership in North Yorkshire, Mr Madgwick, who says he has been accused of being ‘anti-motorcycling’ by some members of the public, is now the national motorcycling lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

He hopes the role will allow him to influence policy at a national level within the Department for Transport and the motorcycle industry in the hope of improving the riding of motorcyclists travelling on North Yorkshire’s roads.

“North Yorkshire is a far nicer place to motorcycle than the middle of Leeds or Bradford, so I know why they come,” he says. “I am not against motorcycling as a hobby, I can see why it would be great to cycle those routes.

“Rather than have a rant and say ‘you should stick to the speed limits’, we want to educate and try to get all the forces in the region to act to offer training and development. It is no good doing this in North Yorkshire if a third of people we stop and intervene with are from West Yorkshire. I will work with my colleagues in the region, I will work with anyone quite frankly.

“If I see it from an industry perspective, it must be far better for their bottom line if someone is going to live and perhaps buy four or five motorcycles over their career than buy a bike and kill themselves in the first week or so, which has happened quite a few times last year. People have died in the first few weeks of owning a bike.

“It is my age group that is the problem. There are a lot of stats to support it. People who perhaps didn’t have the money to spend on their dream bike when they were 25, at 45 have that money if they have been successful.

“There is a male psyche bit, a testosterone bit. What I’m trying to get to is, do they leave their family homes on a Sunday morning, prepared not to come back? Or do they think ‘I’m just going to have a cracking good time and take the risk’?”

This month has seen the launch of a new motorcycling campaign in the county, with ‘Think Bike’ posters and information boards placed across North Yorkshire to raise awareness of accident black spots and remind riders to check their mirrors before turning onto or off a road.

Motorcyclists are being encouraged to visit the roadwise.co.uk website before they set off or consider taking a Bikesafe course, where they will learn how to take the correct line round a bend and how to overtake safely.

A new biker’s guide has been produced highlighting where and how accidents have happened, as well as offering advice on improving skills and tips on choosing helmets and other gear. Members of the 95 Alive team will this summer be attending venues popular with motorcyclists to promote biker safety.

Mr Madgwick hopes to find “better routes into training and consistent routes into training” for bikers, publicised by the motorbike industry, and has recruited well-known local riders Mike Edwards and Dave Coates to help raise awareness.

But for occasions when this approach is not sufficient, Mr Madgwick says more efforts than before are being made to physically stop dangerous bikers with the help of Humberside Police’s team of plain clothes motorcycle officers, who this summer will be operating on North Yorkshire’s roads.

He said: “They will be looking for groups of riders who they believe may be racing, they will be looking for tell-tale signs. They can drop onto the back of groups of motorcyclists, and in the first instance they will just look like another motorcyclist.

“Very quickly you get the idea whether they are broadly within the boundaries of conforming with the speed limit, or if they drop onto the back of them and they are already doing 20mph over the speed limit, they will be gathering the evidence, and there is video evidence now so it is hard to contest.”

Despite the criticism he has received for being ‘anti-motorcycling’, Mr Madgwick says he wants to encourage visitors to come to the county on bikes, and says the hobby has a number of environmental and economic benefits.

He says he is not yet sure whether last year’s death toll is the start of a long-term trend, as 2012’s total of five motorcyclist deaths was six lower than the previous year and the number of serious collisions has remained steady.

But he warns that with road safety budgets both locally and nationally being squeezed, and each fatal road traffic incident costing the country £1.8 million, efforts have to be made to ensure 2013’s figures are seen as a blip.

“I’d be delighted if that trend reverses, if we had no fatalities,” he said. “But who is to say we are not going to have three good summers on the bounce. Are we prepared to accept that fact that this number of motorcyclist are going to die on our roads?”

Guides to the five most dangerous routes for motorcyclists in North Yorkshire are available on the roadwise website.

They are the A170 Thirsk to Scarborough, the A171 Roxby High Moor to Scarborough, the A59 Skipton to Harrogate, the A64 Tadcaster to Scarborough and the A65 Ingleton to Skipton.

The A170 was the scene of a fatal motorbike crash as recently as September, when the rider of a Ducati sport bike collided with a car turning right. Chris Walker, 55, from Beverley, East Yorkshire, was pronounced dead at the scene.

As well as 15 fatal crashes involving motorbikes last year, the 30-year-old rider of an off-road mini motorbike was killed in Main Street, Cliffe, near Selby, in September.