Biker Down Course

[Trevini]

I had the pleasure of attending the course this week. It's run by the Fire Brigade and completely free.

 

It covered the basics of crash scene management with some useful "do's and dont's", especially where there's likely to be an investigation into the crash. There was a very interesting section on being visible with the reasoning behind it, what works and what doesn't and finally some basic first aid, some specific to biker injuries, including helmet removal. The whole thing was just under four hours with refreshments thrown in and was presented by a couple of proper bike enthusiasts, one of whom arrived on this...

 

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[attachment=o15289]

 

Absolutely gorgeous and has recently been restored. He reckons when he opens the taps, he can get about 50 miles to a tank. It's a 20 litre (ish) tank!

 

The original course was put together by Kent Fire Brigade and has been shared with 40 other regions around the country. The one I attended had obviously been "Suffolk-cated" and had footage of one of the local fire serviceman's crash from a few years ago. 

 

Bottom line, It's available over most of the country for free and well worth doing, especially if you ride with groups, or even just a few mates. 

 

Linky to main biker down site

This post was last modified: 16-06-2023, 10:08 AM by Trevini.

[agrantg]

I had the pleasure of attending the course this week. It's run by the Fire Brigade and completely free.

 

It covered the basics of crash scene management with some useful "do's and dont's", especially where there's likely to be an investigation into the crash. There was a very interesting section on being visible with the reasoning behind it, what works and what doesn't and finally some basic first aid, some specific to biker injuries, including helmet removal. The whole thing was just under four hours with refreshments thrown in and was presented by a couple of proper bike enthusiasts, one of whom arrived on this...

 

IMG_0813.jpeg

 

IMG_0812.jpeg

 

Absolutely gorgeous and has recently been restored. He reckons when he opens the taps, he can get about 50 miles to a tank. It's a 20 litre (ish) tank!

 

The original course was put together by Kent Fire Brigade and has been shared with 40 other regions around the country. The one I attended had obviously been "Suffolk-cated" and had footage of one of the local fire serviceman's crash from a few years ago. 

 

Bottom line, It's available over most of the country for free and well worth doing, especially if you ride with groups, or even just a few mates. 

 

Linky to main biker down site

Yes, I did one of these in Buckinghamshire while I was still living down south. The thing I remember was one of the guys was at an accident and the rider was unconscious. They whacked him away in the ambulance and as they started to clean up the scene, one of the guys, who was a biker noticed that the rear pegs were down. They had a good look round and found his girlfriend in the ditch. She had been thrown clear of the accident and was completely out of sight. She was also unconscious but recovered. Lucky girl. Cracking looking bike, by the way. Ali

[Trevini]

It turned out that I attended the same double fatal crash back around 200/2001 as one of the fireman giving the course. 

 

It was nasty and the worst I've ever seen. A ZX7 hit a Suzuki Wagon R in the drivers door. Car pulled out on bike, but the bikes speedo was jammed on 115mph. There was hearsay that the rider used to time himself getting to work from Lowestoft to Beccles and had got the normally 20 min or so journey down to about 9 min. The impact of the bike and rider turned the car over.  The "V" shape in the roof above the drivers door went almost to the centre of the roof. We spent pretty much all night on site reconstructing the accident with the police and fire brigade. 

 

The thing that prompted me to take the course was a few months ago an elderly lady walking along the pavement got blown over by a gust of wind as she passed a side road. She landed in the road with her head almost between the front and rear wheels of a Transit van in front of me. The back when missed her my what looked like millimetres when I played the dash cam footage back. The dash cam footage is quite shocking when you see how close it was to being a fatal accident. She was kind of ok in the end, clearly suffering from shock and had a broken hip. After a very lengthy wait for an ambulance not to appear, I ended up taking her to the hospital. Fortunately, an A&E nurse also stopped and between us, a couple of bystanders and some blankets managed to get her out of the road and eventually into the front seat of my truck (once we'd given her a fairly thorough check over). Her daughter was with her and her son arrived soon after. Had the nurse not been there, I may have been able to do much less to help her.