FireBike partnership extended

Two new motorbikes have been donated to Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS) as part of the FireBike motorcycle safety initiative.

Designed to help ECFRS engage with Essex’s motorcyclists, FireBike promotes safer riding in a bid to reduce the number of motorcycling casualties in the county.

The new S1000RR and R1200GS vehicles, donated by Cannons BMW in Braintree, will be used at more than 100 events across the county each year.

Among those events was last weekend’s V Festival where the FireBike team provided festivalgoers with the opportunity to pick up important safe riding tips.

Essex Police figures for 2015 show that there were 197 motorcyclists killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the county’s roads. Motorbikes account for just 0.8% of all traffic, yet they make up 26% of overall KSIs.

To help address the problem, ECFRS’s FireBike team has been visiting bikers’ ‘meetups’ and events since 2009, while also hosting two different types of courses for keen riders.

One of those, appropriately named Better Biking, sees an individual biker’s riding style, road positioning and clothing assessed for safety, while the other centres on how to control a bike properly in emergency situations.

The two new models will bring the FireBike fleet to four, with a BMW S1000XR sports bike and a Ducati 10985 Tricolore superbike already in use.

Neil Fenwick, ECFRS head of community safety, said:

“I’d like to thank Cannons BMW for their generosity in providing these two fantastic bikes. Their support for FireBike stretches back to when the scheme began eight years ago and that relationship has been crucial to helping make the County’s roads safer.

“These bikes will help us to appeal to an even wider audience of motorcycle enthusiasts – allowing us to do even more to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce risks.”

21 August 2017