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The inspiration for this feature struck me, like all the best ideas, when I least expected it. At the time, I’d always been a little envious of the life of motorcycle traffic cops – a childhood growing up watching CHiPs on the TV must have had more of an effect than I realised – and as an experienced biker myself, their job held obvious attractions. The prospect of being able to cross the City at speed, sirens wailing and blue lights strobing off surrounding buildings whilst cars parted before you must be one hell of a buzz.
I wanted to experience it for myself – not as a passenger, not accompanying officers in the back of a patrol car. No, I wanted to feel the rush of adrenaline through my own veins as I thumbed the bike into life, switching on the blues and twos and racing to an incident, dependent on my own abilities to pilot a course safely through the rush hour gridlock. I wanted, just for once, to experience the sheer, unadulterated pleasure off setting off Gatso after Gatso, riding at more than double the speed limit without fear of prosecution. Impossible, no? This surely would be a feature idea too far. Still, I had to try. To be honest, I held out little hope of pulling it off when I first had the idea, but the likely impossibility of seeing the plan come to fruition only motivated me more.
No police officer can be considered for transfer to the traffic division of a UK police force until he has completed a two-year probationary period. Even having been accepted as a potential traffic officer, the odds of successfully completing the course are stacked against him. Candidates have to pass both basic and general purpose driving courses before then undergoing training for the UK Police Advanced Drivers’ Course. The course, which is standardised across all force areas in the ffice:smarttags" />UK, lasts four weeks and is an intensive program encompassing a punishing high-speed driving schedule each day.
In classes of three plus an instructor, applicants take turns at the wheel learning pursuit techniques taking in both urban and provincial areas. Two or three cars will take turns as pursuer and pursued, and at the end of each sortie, the others in each car will give a critique of the driver’s performance. Drivers are expected to give a constant commentary whilst on pursuit, pointing out likely hazards and potential pitfalls far ahead to the instructor. Most drivers and riders look at a point just in front of the bonnet or the front wheel; advanced courses teach you to look to the vanishing point, reading the road a significant distance ahead. In so doing, one becomes far more aware and is therefore prepared for any potential hazards which may arise, as well as being a more confident and smooth driver. Students learn the correct way to approach a corner – slow in, clipping the apex and accelerating as soon as the horizon appears to move to be moving away.
As well as the intense driving course, which sees a high rate of attrition for applicants nationally, the program devotes a number of weeks to learning the basis of traffic law, advanced turning techniques, dealing with major incidents…the list is endless. All traffic officers in the UK are put through the motorcycle test and those who graduate successfully are posted to their units as qualified traffic officers, able to patrol and undertake pursuits on both bikes and in cars. It’s fair to say that the police in the UK devote the same rigorous training regime to pursuit driving as they do to firearms – and with good reason. In the hands of an improperly qualified officer, driving a high performance police patrol car to the edge of its performance envelope, in pursuit of somebody intent on getting away is potentially more lethal then a gun.
So to be absolutely truthful, despite being a rider with significantly more experience than the average, I expected to be met with a flat refusal to my request to ride a marked police patrol bike. And I wasn’t disappointed when I spoke to the press office at New Scotland Yard. The senior PR girl there laughed at the outrageousness of what I was proposing. However, once again, fortune smiled upon me and the next force I approached, South Yorkshire, was a little more forthcoming.
I was somewhat fortuitous in that a new commander had been appointed in charge of South Yorkshire’s traffic division and he had one objective; to reduce the appalling number of motorcycle fatalities within his force area. Historically, South Yorkshire has always had a high number of bikers passing through its borders, especially in high summer given that the county includes some of the best roads in the country. The previous summer, 2000, had seen a record number of fatalities amongst bikers, including six over one five day period, and he was prepared to consider anything to help reduce that figure. He was pro-bike, media friendly and immediately saw benefits in granting me what it was I sought.
By granting me unprecedented access and allowing me to ride a marked police bike, shadowing another officer on a two day patrol, he hoped I would be able to convey to readers of the magazines I was representing just what it is like to be a traffic cop. To let them see, through my words, the anguish and frustration at having to pick up body parts from the scene of an accident where somebody’s attitude exceeded their ability - with tragic consequences. To show that the police have a positive role to play, which doesn’t just mean curtailing the fun of bikers out to enjoy themselves.
The offer was open and unrestricted – two days on patrol with an experienced motorcycle traffic cop. No parameters – where he went, I went. All calls, blues and twos, accidents, speed traps, pursuits, the whole nine yards. They invited me up with my snapper, Nick, entertained us both and made us welcome. After an assessment ride to ensure that I was (1) capable of handling the machine and (2), capable of riding to the necessary standard, I was signed off and I rode out into the urban sprawl of rush hour Sheffield on a temperate, sunny Thursday. What I saw opened my eyes.
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It’s a perfect day for riding – sunny, blue skies and warm tarmac. I’m tooling along at a fair pace, the road stretching ahead of me and for perhaps the only time in my life, I am oblivious to the threat of traffic police. I can ride as fast and as hard as I dare, my only restriction being my own limitations. This, surely, is nirvana.
The helmet speakers inside my white Shoei Synchrotec helmet send out a constant stream of verbiage, words across the ether delivered to me via the umbilical cord that connects my helmet to the radio controls on my Honda Pan European. But this is no ordinary Pan Euro and the words I’m hearing aren’t from a stressed and over-worked courier controller with a screen full of jobs to cover. I’m listening to the calm, considered tones of a fantasy female sat in the control centre of South Yorkshire Police Headquarters and the bike I’m riding is a fully-marked police pursuit bike, complete with ‘blues and twos’ and ‘Police-Pilot’ radar.
Journalism has led me along some bizarre paths, but this is surely the most surreal of all. For two days earlier this year, I was granted the opportunity of riding as a traffic officer by South Yorks police; no limits, no restrictions. Come with us, they had said, and write it as you see it.
In my mirrors, slightly back and to my nearside, I see the headlights from a BMW police bike ridden by my escort for the day, 20 year copper Chris Pulfrey, and behind him an unmarked video-equipped Volvo S70 traffic car with my snapper Nick on board. We are on our way to a quiet residential street alongside Sheffield University to investigate a complaint by residents of a car obstructing the road.
The Volvo incidentally is one surprise you don’t want to encounter. Silent and stealth-like it cruises, just another executive car adding to the gridlocked traffic, a cluster of antennae and a flip up sign on the rear parcel shelf the only clues to its true identity. Provoke the ire off its crew though, and it lights up like the proverbial Christmas tree as the recessed blue lights behind the grill and wailing siren encourage you to stop. Fail to take heed and the stiffened suspension and well of performance that the S70 can draw from will make life very difficult for you – when you are finally caught, you’ll have a great view of the results of your misdeeds on the screen in the car’s centre console (and it’s clearly visible to occupants of the back seat!)
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Via the boom mike fitted inside my helmet, I am able to converse with Chris at will. The button on the Pan’s bars that would normally flash the main beam is converted to act as a push to talk switch, allowing a constant stream of conversation between us against the background of calls and assignments from the radio’s main channel. Equally, by pushing a button on the radio console fitted into the side fairing I can talk to any police station or car within the South Yorks area – no fade or blackspots with these frequencies, either!
Turning into the road we have been tasked to investigate, I see the cause of complaint - a 3-series BMW (somewhat predictably!) blocking passage along both road and pavement. Another traffic bike is already on scene, having arrived a few minutes beforehand, and its rider is arranging to have the car removed.
Chris dismounts and wanders over to chat with his colleague whilst I remain on my bike, listening to the chatter on the radio. Suddenly, from amongst the ether, I hear details of an ‘RTA with personal injuries to a motorcyclist’. I motion to Chris who, unplugged from his bike hasn’t heard the call come over. Once plugged in though, he talks to me over the intercom.
“We’ll deal with this one – we’ve got an accident involving a van and a motorcycle on the far side of Sheffield. You up for it?”
I signal my assent as Chris fires up his K100 and hits the blues and twos. Courtesy of the control cluster next to the throttle on my bike, I do the same and immediately see the reflection of my blue strobes bouncing off of the surroundings. Adrenaline on fast-feed, I edge out into the rush hour traffic and as soon as we’re moving, I hit the Tri-sound siren, my bike now a moving symphony of ‘son et lumière’ signalling my presence to other road users.
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The traffic along the main east-west route through Sheffield is a solid mass at 09:00, one long snaking line of frustrated commuters. Riding on the offside, I constantly swap sides behind Chris seeking a clear view of the road ahead. It’s filtering, but like nothing I’ve ever done before and with the speeds involved, the concentration required is immense. I’m immersed in an alien environment but surrounded by the basics of familiarity – I cut my biking teeth riding in heavy, urban traffic, but it was nothing like this. Here, the only sound in my ears is the constant stream of radio traffic, fighting for prominence with the muted sound of the 200db siren focused ahead of me.
Chris is giving me a running commentary as we race through the centre of town, identifying potential hazards to me that are outside my field of vision. I’m working the bike hard, the revs high, snicking up and down through the gearbox. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that police bikers are no big deal – safe, yes, fast? Maybe, but not courier-fast through town. I’ve just had my illusions shattered. The concentration required to ride like this through heavy rush hour traffic is immense – my mind feels like its been sucked through a funnel, the sensory overload initially more than I can deal with comfortably. After a few minutes though, it’s all coming together and I’m soon into the groove.
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I wonder aloud to Chris whether I’d be able to outrun him if he were chasing me. After all, ‘Roadcraft’ and some blue lights on a BMW are surely no match for the average track-day hero on his sportsbike (I got chance to see for myself later on our second day when we headed from Dronfield Woodhouse over to Buxton for a photo call on some twisties. Through some of the best roads in the country, I chased Chris round sweeping left and right handers, along straights and round corners where sparks flew as both Pan and BMW decked out. Where the national speed limit applied, the gloves came off and I saw just how good a rider Chris really was. If you really want to know, I came close, but not close enough!)
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As we press on, I notice a set of traffic lights at a major junction ahead turn red and instinctively reach for the brakes. A reaction that has become a part of my subconscious, instinctive through a million repetitions takes more than a 5 minute run in an alien environment to eradicate. It takes a conscious thought to overcome the urge to stop, and for the first time as a rider, I run a red light – properly. Not a shade after it’s turned, a furtive dash for the other side; a full 10/15 seconds, with cross traffic at its height.
Chris is through the junction as I cross it, entering cautiously but assertively. I slow on the approach, checking both ways for vehicles, the wail of the siren rising and falling ahead of me, cutting through the gridlock like a returning crusader through his mistress’ chastity belt. Seeing a clear path, I drop down a cog and nail the throttle.
Traffic is still heavy, but we’re making progress. Passing West Bar and its police station, I check my speed as indicated by my Vascar display with its accurate, calibrated speedo – 80mph in a 30mph limit!
Over a roundabout, contra to an island on the other side and we’re heading into oncoming traffic. I watch it part miraculously before me, my progress unimpeded despite the number of vehicles approaching me.
We pass through another two major junctions against red lights, but I’m on the pace now. The traffic thins out ahead of us as we cross a major roundabout and onto dual carriageway. A GATSO camera ahead of us catches first Chris, then myself a split second later – 95mph in a 50 with no prospect whatsoever of a ticket being despatched; I could get used to this.
Ahead of us, I see the traffic backed up and subconsciously ease off the gas as I catch sight of our objective. I filter through half a mile of traffic and cut the siren as we reach the front to find a scene of complete devastation – the beginnings of a debris field that stretches ahead, marked by almost unrecognisable pieces of metal that were once the guts of a ’99 GSX-R600. Its rider lies prone on the tarmac ahead of us, the bike some 200 yards further ahead, wedged into a bush at the roadside.
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I park the Pan at the head of the queue of vehicles, angled to protect the rider, rear strobe and red lights flashing a warning to others. By now, other emergency vehicles are arriving on scene together with a paramedic crew who immediately attend to the injured rider.
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Whilst they make him comfortable, Chris talks to the driver of a van who claims that the motorcyclist cut in front of him, clipping his front bumper at speed. He is breathalysed as a matter of course (as too will the rider be when circumstances permit although both results turn out to be negative).
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By now, there are more than enough units on scene to deal with the aftermath of the crash, so Chris and I head off to a road outside a local school where a number of accidents have occurred due to speeding vehicles. Chris says, “We would much rather educate than prosecute, but there are some cases where speeding is just unacceptable. We have some fantastic roads round here where I for one have no issue with fast, safe riding or driving. Here though – it’s out of order”.
Before setting off that morning, I sat in on a briefing about the day ahead for the officers starting their shift. It’s here that the police are brought up to date with events on the ground over the previous 24hours and tasked to pay special attention to accident and speeding hot spots. “Not necessarily to nick offenders”, Chris explained, “but if a particular road in town is attracting speeders, merely by making our presence felt, we can make a difference”.
Before we go out, we’re shown some particularly graphic photos taken by scenes-of-crime photographers of recently filed accidents. There is a particularly gruesome sequence of pictures taken of a crash involving a stolen R1, which was ridden by the thief and a pillion. At a speed estimated by investigators to be close to 100mph, the rider had lost control approaching a bend that, at half that speed, he would have made comfortably. The rider had hit a lamppost before his body had ended, doll-like, inside a phone box. His head is missing from the body and another shot shows his face – detached from the head – lying in somebody’s front garden.
The pictures are shocking in the extreme, a graphical representation of what happens when it all goes wrong. It focuses my mind for the day ahead, but I have a choice. The police don’t, and one of the reasons that they’re so intent on keeping the roads safe is due to the number of times that they’ve had to scrape people up off the tarmac. Nobody enjoys dealing with the aftermath of a fatal accident, a point driven home to me only too realistically later that day when we are called to attend a fatal motorcycle crash at the end of our shift, where the rider has lost control at high speed and ploughed into the back of a stationary car, followed by his bike.
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We plot up in a side road adjacent to the school where we have a clear view along the main road (and consequently are also clearly visible to passing motorists). A few hundred yards along the main road is a pedestrian crossing, directly outside the entrance to the school. Chris explains, “The Vascar plots the speed of a vehicle between two known points of a pre-determined distance. If I hit the button when a vehicle passes the stop line for the pedestrian crossing and then hit it again as the vehicle passes in front of us, it will calculate and flash up the speed of that vehicle between the two points”.
We had calibrated the Vascar on both Chris’ K100 and my ST1100 that morning along a stretch of road outside police HQ, so I know that the figures will be accurate. For 10 minutes we sit watching vehicles head over the brow of a hill – and each one reduces its speed when its driver catches sight of us. I clock several at speeds up to 40 mph but Chris is content to let them pass. “It’s the blatant disregard for the conditions that we look for”, he tells me. “There’s a clearly posted 30mph limit along this road together with appropriate road markings outside the school. If somebody hacks along here at more than 40mph then I’ll go after them – they either aren’t paying attention to the conditions or they’re content to take their chances. Either way, they’re fair game”.
Sure enough, we both watch as a blue VW Golf GTI crests the hill at speed. Unlike most of the other vehicles that morning, he doesn’t slow – clearly he hasn’t seen us. As he passes us, the Vascar on my screen flashes up the speed – 51.16 mph.
Even as I’m switching on the sirens and lights on my bike, Chris is off, chasing the car. Adrenaline once again on fast feed, I tuck in behind him and we begin a short pursuit of a driver who despite the two police bikes signally behind him, fails to stop. After two sets of lights and a roundabout which the driver takes without looking, he finally sees us and panics. He accelerates briefly as if to make a run for it, but then clearly decides discretion is the better part of valour and yields to our demand for him to stop. He slows down before pulling in to the side of the road.
We park some way back and cautiously approach the vehicle. The driver, a young Australian in a baseball cap steps out and is immediately confrontational. He is in a hurry, and even when his speed is pointed out to him, unapologetic. Chris cautions him before writing him up for a ticket, which will result in 3 points and a fine to endorse his licence - given the guy’s attitude, I don’t feel overly sorry for him. After running a check on the vehicle over the radio to verify his details, he is allowed to continue.
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As well as Vascar, traffic officers also have access to the new Pro-Laser camera gun, which is deadly accurate. Chris says, “It’s a great bit of kit –you just sight it onto a vehicle for a few seconds and by bouncing a radar beam off of the target, it immediately flashes up the speed on the head-up display. It’s worryingly accurate and can get vehicles from as far away as 1000m even in poor light”. I groan at this addition to the police arsenal although Chris is keen to reassure me that bikers are probably the least persecuted group of motorists as generally, their roadcraft is of a much higher standard.
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Our speed trap comes to a halt as the radio tasks us to yet another call and we’re off again. Which pretty much sets the pattern for the 48 hours that I’m on patrol – a mix of reactive and pro-active policing, stopping errant motorists, educating a few, nicking a few, and chatting up attractive women who flirt alongside us in traffic in convertible 3-series BMWs. See, every job has its perks.
The high-speed runs on blues and twos were predictably the highpoints of my days shadowing the traffic police. The fatal accident (attributed at the inquest much later as being down to rider error) was far and away the lowest. I wasn’t alone, either - all of the traffic cops I met were bikers in their own time so accidents like that hit everyone hard.
As bikers who ride police bikes, it’s reassuring to note that they are affected by the same rules and restrictions as the rest of us. Riding a fully marked police bike though has to be the only way to travel – other road users suddenly change their attitude, giving you space and letting you out of side turnings unbidden. It’s something that even Chris has never gotten used to, as he takes up. He said, “Sometimes, when I’m riding home on my own BMW R1100RS, I can’t understand why people are trying to cut me up. Then I realise I’m not at work and I’m on my own bike so I have to fight back!”
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