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02/06/2006 - Devon County Council chooses Honda

DEVON COUNTY COUNCIL has chosen Honda motorcycles to help with its pro-biker safety schemes.

Torbay Motorcycles in Newton Abbot has supplied the county council with a CBF600SA machine and this will be ridden on some of the county’s accident black spots to assess what can be done to increase safety for bikers in the area.

Jeremy Phillips, the road safety operations manager for Devon County Council said: "Like many local authorities we have a biker casualty problem. They make up just 1.5 per cent of our traffic but are 33 per cent of our fatalities. However, we realise that they are very valuable road users. They contribute a lot to the economy, they help congestion and it is cheap and affordable transport in Devon’s rural areas."

He added: "Normally we do highway assessments in cars, but when the roads are seen as problematic from a two-wheel perspective, we will now send people to assess carriageway road surfaces by bike. We understand that bikes are different, they take different lines and accelerate and brake differently, so things need to be investigated from the saddle. Initially this will be done on routes that we have identified as problematic for bikes, but we will be happy to get feedback from the county’s bikers and investigate further roads and routes. In fact, we’ve been working on our project called Spiller Killer for a while. This is a hotline for bikers to report diesel spills and carriageway defects, so we’ve worked with biker feedback before."