Bike accident news
11/02/2008

Ewan McGregor-style helmet cameras to reduce motorcycle accidents

North Yorkshire police have announced a plan using Ewan McGregor-style helmet cameras to help prevent motorcycle accidents on their region's roads. Under this plan, local footage taken by skilled police bikers will be used by the Highways Department to identify road safety improvements.

North Yorkshire's accident rate is notably high in the UK, with 19 deaths and 117 serious instances of personal injury in the area over 2007. Of these, approximately 75% involved riders from outside the region, suggesting that unfamiliarity with North Yorkshire roads was a factor in these motorcycle accidents, which tend to cluster in certain collision 'blackspot' sites.

A police spokesman said that "We want to identify the root cause of the collision. To do this, we need to identify to the highway engineers exactly what the biker sees, not what the engineer sees when standing at the side of the road on a site visit.

"Once the collision cluster site is identified, we ride the route giving a running commentary with video footage. We identify what we, as experienced bikers, consider may be causing the collisions.

"Although the project is in its infancy, a particular hotspot site at Cold Hill Lane, Sherburn, is in the process of having additional signage and markings installed as a direct result of this initiative."

This plan is part of a campaign called 95 Alive, which aims to reduce the number of fatalities in motorcycle accidents by 95 lives over three years.