From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: rec.autos.driving,rec.motorcycles
Subject: Re: Police bike/cruiser safety (was: Perot's proposed gas tax)
Date: 6 Nov 92 14:34:22 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Nov5.184618.1581@miki.pictel.com> harling@miki.pictel.com (Dan Harling) writes:
>In article <27742@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>In article <9ugNTB1w164w@upchrch.UUCP> joel@upchrch.UUCP (Joel Upchurch  ) writes:
>>>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>>>> In fact, police motorcyclists have 20% less accidents than police car
>>>> drivers, which fits quite nicely with the above estimate, and in this
>>>> case we _are_ comparing like populations of drivers and uses.

>>>I suspect that number is the number of accidents per YEAR, not per
>>>MILE. 

>>I should have mentioned that the figure was _per_mile_; that was the
>>context of the previous discussion.

>It is possible that police motorcyclists are better trained, or drive
>more conservatively, than the average citizen motorcyclist, whereas
>police car drivers may not be given special attention, and thus drive
>no differently from anyone else.

In fact in the UK there are two classes of police drivers. The first
are police who simply drive around in cars to get around. They have a
certain amount of training. Then there are the specialised police
drivers, who have fast cars and are very highly trained, as are the
police motorcyclists. The comparison was between police motorcyclists,
and the specialised police drivers, both of whom are similar in age
and training. The motorcycle police do get extra training, since they
first learn traffic skills by passing the specialised car driving
course, and then learn motorcycle-specific stuff afterwards; but the
intention of the courses is to train them to the same standard, and
the police argue that the motorcyclists get extra training simply
because bikes need more skill.

>It may also be that police motorcycles are generally not used in
>hazardous situations in which a car would be safer, e.g., high-speed
>pursuit.  I suspect that once a cruiser arrived on the scene of a
>chase, the motorcycle would be called off for the safety of the
>officer.  In other words, cruisers may see more hazardous duty than
>motorcycles.

For high speed motorway pursuits this is true, since the fastest
police cars can go quite a bit faster than the fastest police
motorcycles, which generally have a maximum in the 120mph range. But
for high speed urban chases, or chases on congested motorways where
ultimate high speed in impossible, then since the motorcycles can
easily travel much faster than cars simply because they are nippier,
it would be silly to hand over a pursuit begun by a bike to a car. And
of course the congested conditions which favour bike pursuit are also
more dangerous.

All in all, it was the opinion of the writer citing these statistics
that the pattern of mileage, hazard, driver age, and training, for the
two types of vehicle was similar; unlike the conventional accident
statistics.

Note once again that these statistics come from the UK. There is not
much point in discussing them in terms of US police habits, especially
since US police tend to ride Harleys or other cruiser-style bikes such
as the LAPD Guzzis, and these are not much use in high speed pursuit
anyway.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205