Bikesafe, Shrewsbury, Free!

Thought I would post a quick write-up of the Bikesafe day.

It was made clear that Bikesafe is intended to be an introduction to advanced riding and one of its aims is to encourage you to consider further training with IAM or ROSPA.

The morning session was a presentation and a couple of videos. All very relaxed - the presentation was highly amusing in places and got some chuckles out of everyone.

Much of the ride (about 4 hours) focussed on road positioning - keep to left on approach to right-hand bend, right on left-hand bend, to maximise visibility through the corner, but compromise it for safety (e.g. oncoming traffic, houses with driveways, etc) - the sort of stuff that's been mentioned on this site and in magazines, etc, although I'm sure it would focus on different things depending upon your own strengths and weaknesses. Very instructive to actually see put into practice.

I was surprised at how aggressive (from my point of view) the police rider encouraged us to be. Lots of overtaking (but never near junctions or lay-bys, etc). It was made clear that they are the police - if something came up they would have to deal with it, and if you came up they would deal with you (so no wheelies). However, he also made it clear that he was on a calibrated bike so he would lead, making use of the full 10% error margin and we would still be legal. He also made it clear that exceeding the speed limit to reduce risk when overtaking is acceptable, in their eyes, as long as the manouver is still safe in all other respects.

He recommended we get copies of Roadcraft (also been reported here, I know).

It's also a good PR exercise for the police, I think. They were all good blokes and you have admire their abilites (IMHO). For our first stop our instructor took us into a truck-and-biker style cafe for a nice cup of tea. Rather disconcerting when the entire place goes silent and starts staring at you. Then someone says the most original thing ever: 'looks like they've found me'. Ho, and again, ho.

Overall, a very good day - I learned a lot - and would recommend it to anyone who has done no road training since their bike test.

Yep i enjoyed my day untill i crashed and I will be going back to do it again.