Sun employee & fanatical motorcyclist Mike Belch's Weblog Biker Mike's Weblog

I have posted in this blog before about SMIDSY accidents — where a motorist causes an accident by failing to spot a motorcycle. Well yesterday it finally happened to me. I was in the car park of B&Q (the British version of Home Depot) when a car reversed out of a parking space and into the side of my bike. The impact, which happened when I was doing less that 10mph, knocked the bike over on its side and catapulted me off the bike completely. I lay there for a few seconds assessing the situation, wiggling my fingers and toes to make sure I was OK and then I thought "I'm going to teach this motorist a lesson". So I lay there motionless.

The motorist got out of his car and a few other people ran over, having seen or heard the crash, to check on how I was. I continued to lay motionless listening to the "oh, my god" and "is he OK" comments from the motorist and onlookers. After a suitable pause, probably less than 30 seconds if I'm honest, I got up. A small man when faced with a 6'3", 240lb biker in full leathers and crash helmet that makes him look even bigger, would be forgiven for going quite pale and forgetting how to speak. He spluttered an apology to me then obeyed instantly as I asked him to move his car off the top of my bike. Over the next few minutes I checked out the bike, which was completely damage free, and then (politely) gave the motorist a bit of a lecture on the need to pay attention to bicycles and motorcycles. We parted company with him still apologising and me unhurt, but with a smug satisfaction that at least one motorist on the road is gong to pay attention in future. Or at least for the next few days...

Merry Christmas everyone. Be sure to ride and drive safe!

SmugMug are very nice people. Not only does their CEO blog about how great Sun's servers are, but they are also great supporters of non-profit organisations such as the Freewheelers blood bike charity that I do voluntary work for. Last week SmugMug gave us a Professional Account free of charge to host all the photographs we have of our people, bikes and fundraising events. See them for yourself in the Freewheelers photo galleries.

The UK has a long tradition of using humour to make public information films more palatable. The new film below is a great example. It is produced by Devon County Council to promote bike safety. Motorcycles and their riders are vulnerable when other road users fail to see them and pull out in front of bikes at road junctions. Two tonnes of car squaring up to 300kg of bike is no contest. If you don't know what SMIDSY means, watch the video!

Some public safety films from the 1970's have achieved cult status. Some notable examples include:

• Learn To Swim - featuring "Dave" and "Mike" competing for the affections of a girl who loves to swim.

• Charley says... Don't Talk to Strangers - the first of a large number of films featuring Charley the cat.

• Charley says... Always ask Mummy

• Charley says... Never Play With Matches

• Tufty Buys an Ice Cream - Tufty was the #1 road safety figure in the UK for many years.

• Crossplys and Radials Don't Mix - a warning about mixing tyre types on a cars.

I would love to see some of the other old films. It would also be great to see if other countries did the same. Feel free to get in contact if you have any good examples.

This week I am on duty again on the blood bike. One of the reasons that I am allowed to ride the bike is that I have passed an advanced riding test with the UK's Institute of Advanced Motoring (IAM) and I have also demonstrated to Freewheelers assessor that I am a competent and safe rider. I know that I now see things on the road that I never saw when I was a new rider. As a consequence I am safer and less likely to be involved in an accident. I strongly believe that no matter how good a rider you think you are, there is always room for improvement. You can never have enough rider training.

I was quite interested to see the clip below on YouTube from a UK advanced riding organisation. I already have the full DVD that this clip is taken from and it really helped me to perfect some aspects of my riding. So, no matter how good your are, take just 6 minutes to watch this video. If you like what you see then go and get some advanced training. In the UK you can go to IAM, RoSPA, the guys who shot this video, or someone like Mike Waite (whose DVD is also excellent) and any number of reputable commercial training providers. In the rest of the world I am sure you will have equivalent organisations.

Safe riding!

At 7:00am on Monday morning I woke up and thought "Phew, it's over!". This has been a really long week for me, on duty for the first time as coordinator for the Freewheelers blood bikes. The coordintars job seems at first glance like a simple one: Take the telephone calls from hospitals and dispatch the nearest rider to deal. If only it were that simple. From now on I with have a great deal of respect for anyone involved in the logistics of a transport organisation, whether it be taxi, plane, fire engine or truck.

Throughout the week I have kept a tally of "the scores on the doors", a phrase borrowed from a long defunct BBC TV show called The Generation Game. So here they are for the whole week:

• We handled 57 requests for assistance. 4 were emergency calls. 6 were declined by me and 1 was cancelled by the hospital.

• Our 3 volunteer riders spent over 67 hours away from home, either in the saddle or walking the corridors of various hospitals.

• We carried blood samples, drugs, patient notes, medical instruments, and X-Rays and scans - both in film and CD-ROM format.

• We saved the NHS £1565.

I just want to pick up on this last point - the money we saved the NHS. If our service didn't exist the NHS would have to rely on taxis do handle the work that we do. This is what the figure of £1565 is based on. However, a taxi would not have helped the patient with the intra cranial bleed on Saturday when our bike used blue lights and sirens to get through busy Saturday afternoon shoppers travelling into Bristol and Bath. It is difficult to put a price on the real saving that we bring to the NHS because you cannot put a price on a life. However, it is easy to calculate that the NHS would have to spend close to £400,000 to replicate our service with full time employees and dedicated vehicles. That's not bad for a charity run by volunteers which needs just £20,000 a year to operate. Help support us - Give Money!

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

After a long week on duty as telephone coordinator for the Freewheelers blood bikes, I was looking forward to a quiet day. I got my wish as we only had a few calls with everyone but the East bike rider home before dark. Here are the details of what we did today:

• East Bike: During the day the rider delivered drugs from the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath to Melksham Hospital and Paulton Hospital. In the evening he made an urgent delivery of a blood sample from the maternity unit at Paulton to the RUH pathology labs. Later in the evening I received a request from the RUH to deliver a letter to a patient's house. For patient confidentiality reasons I cannot discuss what was in the letter, but due to our strict policy on how home deliveries are handled and a concern for the safety of our rider in this particular case, I declined to do the job. The police were asked to deliver the letter instead. NHS money saved: £70. Time on the road: 5h5m

• West Bike: An urgent delivery of patient notes from Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton to the neurosurgeons at Frenchay Hospital. This was followed by a delivery of a blood sample from the privately run NHS treatment centre in Shepton Mallet to the pathology labs at Musgrove Park. NHS money saved: £170. Time on the road: 5h55m.

• North Bike: An emergency delivery of medical instruments from the operating theatre at Southmead Hospital in Bristol to the theatre at Frenchay Hospital. This call originally started as urgent but when our rider got to the hospital he was told to treat it as an emergency because the patient was already "under the knife" at Frenchay. This was followed by an urgent delivery of blood from Southmead Hospital to the Health Protection Agency microbiology laboratory in the centre of Bristol. Later in the evening I was asked to send our bike to Frenchay Hospital to collect and return to Weston-super-Mare a drug pump that was being take to Frenchay in an ambulance with a patient. When I queried the size of the pump the hospital went away and shortly came back to me telling me to cancel the call. Apparently the drug pump was too big to go in the ambulance so there was no way it was going to fit on a bike! NHS money saved: £20. Time on the road: 2 hours.

The scores on the doors for the last night of my week on duty are £260 saved for the NHS and riders on the road for 13 hours. I really was glad for everyone, including myself, that we did not get any late night calls.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

Saturday was a very busy day for the Freewheelers blood bikes. Here are the details of what we did today:

• East Bike: At the beginning of the day I turned down a request for our rider to deliver some drugs to a nursing home just 400yds away from the hospital. This was soon followed by an emergency delivery from the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath to the neurosurgeons at Frenchay Hospital of a CD-ROM contain scans for a patient with a large intra cranial bleed. A delivery of drugs from the RUH to a nursing home outside Calne in Wiltshire. An urgent delivery of blood samples from the maternity unit in Chippenham back to the RUH pathology labs. The last job of a busy day was an urgent delivery of drugs from Weston Super Mare hospital to a patient's home in Kingswood on the east side of Bristol. NHS money saved: £190. Time on the road: 6h55m

• West Bike: Three drug deliveries from Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton to the local hospice and two mental health units. An urgent collection from the Bristol Children's Hospital of a special baby milk formula for the special care baby unit at Musgrove Park. An urgent delivery of scans from Musgrove Park to the neurosurgeons at Frenchay Hospital - a call that was shared by our North bike rider who met him half way. An emergency collection of a blood sample from a mental health unit in Taunton for analysis at the pathology labs at Musgrove Park. And finally an urgent delivery of blood from Musgrove Park for cross matching at the regional blood transfusion centre at Southmead Hospital in Bristol. NHS money saved: £310. Time on the road: 9h35m!

• North Bike: A delivery of medical instruments from the operating theatre at Southmead Hospital in Bristol to the theatre at Frenchay Hospital. An urgent delivery of drugs from the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) to Southmead Hospital. An urgent collection of notes from Frenchay Hospital and the BRI, both for the same patient, delivered to Southmead Hospital. Halfway handover from the West bike rider of scans going from Taunton up to Frenchay Hospital. And finally an emergency delivery of a CD-ROM containing scans from the RUH in Bath to the neurosurgeons at Frenchay Hospital. This last call was a repeat of the one made earlier in the day by our East rider as the original CD-ROM was unreadable. NHS money saved: £60. Time on the road: 4h50m.

So the scores on the doors for tonight are £560 saved for the NHS and riders on the road for a gruelling 21h20. At the end of the evening I poured myself a couple of well earned drinks. It has been a busy and stressful day for me handling 17 requests for help - all but one of which we fulfilled - and I was happy for both me and the riders that no calls came in during the night.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

Friday's calls for the Freewheelers blood bikes. Our North bike rider, who was called out at 4:10am earlier in the day had a much deserved night off tonight. In fact it was a quiet night for everyone, with just two calls received.

• West Bike: A delivery of drugs from Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton to a mental health unit in Taunton. This should have been a straightforward job with our rider picking up the drugs from the Accident & Emergency department as the pharmacy was closed. Unfortunately the pharmacy had forgotten to send the drugs across so our rider had to wait 1.5 hours while an on-call pharmacist was bleeped. In the meantime the call became more urgent as the nurse reported the patient was "climbing the walls" waiting for the drugs. NHS money saved: £5. Time on the road: 3h10m

• East Bike: An urgent delivery of blood samples from Paulton Memorial Hospital to the Royal United Hospital in Bath. NHS money saved: £22. Time on the road: 1h45m

So the scores on the doors tonight are a low £27 saved for the NHS, which kept our riders on the road for incredibly high 4h55m. Sometimes this job is like that, but our volunteers keep doing it because every day on duty is different.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle, Emergency

The theme of tonight's calls for the Freewheelers blood bikes was head injuries. Also, yesterday I said it would be tempting fate to say I wished our riders could have a night at home in bed. I should have kept my mouth shut!

Our West bike rider had an evening at home with no calls, but the other two were kept busy:

• North Bike: A very urgent delivery of patient notes from Frenchay Hopsital to the cardiac care unit at Southmead Hospital in Bristol. This was followed by an urgent delivery of X-Rays from the accident and emergency department at the Royal United Hospital in Bath to the specialist neurosurgery team at Frenchay. The rider was home before 10:30pm and I thought that was that until a call came in at 4:10am for an urgent delivery of X-Rays from Weston-super-Mare to the neurosurgeons at Frenchay. As a rider I hate early morning calls and I have now discovered it is no more pleasant being the coordinator at the time. I didn't feel like sleeping while the rider was out so I stayed up and waited until he was safely back home. At least it gave me a chance to catch up on my paperwork for the night's calls. Anyway, the job passed without incident and the rider was safely home by 6:00am. NHS money saved: £100. Time on the road: 4h30m

• East Bike: A call came in at 4:00pm but when I explained we didn't start until 7:00pm the hospital in Bath made other arrangements. Our rider then had a busy evening doing an urgent delivery of a CD-ROM containing scans from the children's ward at the RUH in Bath to the children's ward at Frenchay - another neurosurgery consultation. He then picked up a urine sample from St Martin's hospital to go to the RUH pathology labs, a set of notes to go from the RUH to the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (also known as the Mineral Hospital because of its location right next to the famous Bath Spa), and then finally an urgent delivery of drugs to a patient's house in the beautiful city of Wells. NHS money saved: £90. Time on the road: 5h0m

I made a huge mistake at the beginning of the evening in thinking that I could do the coordinator role while mobile. I had to go over to Weston-super-Mare to see my mum. Most of the calls I got were while I was in the car. I initially gave our North bike rider a job to deliver some drugs from Weston-super-Mare to a patient's home in the town. However, when the urgent Frenchay to Southmead job came in I had to decline the Weston delivery. The hospital then came back to me to say it really was urgent as a mother had to give her handicapped son an injection by a specific time - talk about piling on the guilt! As the delivery involved both drugs and syringes they were not happy about giving it to a local taxi, so they begged me to reconsider. I was in Weston at the time so I agreed to do the job myself. I had the pleasure of handing over the drugs just 20 minutes later to a very grateful mother. Doing a blood bike call in my car felt very strange. And warm! NHS money saved: £10. Time on the road: 0h20m

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle, Emergency

The Freewheelers blood bike service does not officially start until 7:00pm. However, today I received the first call for help at 4:10pm. It was an urgent request for patient notes to be transferred from the Royal United Hospital in Bath to Chippenham Hospital. With early requests like this we tell the hospital that we don't start until 7:00pm and suggest they arrange alternative transport if the job cannot wait. In this case the hospital was happy to wait until 7:00pm so I sent an SMS message to the East bike rider to say that he had a job waiting for him when he came on duty. To my amazement he came back to me and said he would do the job immediately. In the middle of winter all our weekday deliveries are made in the dark, so he got a ride out in the sunshine for a change.

The rest of the evening was what I would describe as average. Here are the details of what we did:

• North Bike: A delivery of patient notes from Weston-super-Mare to Southmead Hospital in Bristol, followed by another delivery of notes from Frenchay NHS money saved: £65. Time on the road: 2h00m

• East Bike: The aforementioned delivery from Bath to Chippenham, followed later in the evening by an urgent delivery of a drug chart from Bath to Melksham. NHS money saved: £55. Time on the road: 4h15m

• West Bike: An urgent delivery between two mental health units in Taunton and Bridgwater after a patient was transferred without his drugs. Followed by the urgent delivery of blood samples from the mental health unit in Bridgwater for analysis at the pathology labs in Taunton. NHS money saved: £50. Time on the road: 1h50m.

So the scores on the doors for tonight are £170 saved for the NHS and riders on the road for 8 hours. I am probably tempting fate here, but so far this week nobody has been called out after midnight. I am most grateful for this because my wife gets really grumpy if a phone call wakes her in the middle of the night!

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

A truly foul night with heavy rain and strong winds. Luckily for the Freewheelers blood bikes it turned out to be a quiet night in contrast to Monday and we only received two requests for help, which meant that two of our riders had a night at home.

Our North bike rider made a delivery of drugs from Weston-super-Mare to a patient's home in Sandford near Winscombe, followed by a delivery of X-Rays from Weston-super-Mare to Frenchay Hospital which is north of Bristol. NHS money saved: £75. Time on the road: 2h20m.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

The phrase "baptism of fire" springs to mind. Within 30 minutes of starting my first week on duty as a telephone coordinator for the Freewheelers blood bikes, I had received eleven requests for assistance.

We have three active riders on duty from 7:00pm to 7:00am during the week and 24 hours at the weekend. Despite this through-the-night service we try to minimise the amount of work that we give our riders to ensure that they are fresh should a real emergency come through. Luckily tonight we didn't have any emergencies, which is just as well as our North rider, covering Bristol, had requests for eight deliveries. I decided to immediately to reject four of the jobs which were for the delivery of drugs solely within Weston-super-Mare.

So here is the list of what our riders actually did during the evening:

• North Bike: An urgent delivery of X-Ray films from Bristol Oncology Centre to the specialist neurosurgery unit at Frenchay Hospital north of Bristol. A delivery of patient notes from Frenchay to Weston-super-Mare, followed by the exact reverse - delivering more patient notes from Weston back to Frenchay. A delivery of patient notes from Weston to Southmead Hospital in Bristol followed by a delivery of more notes from Southmead over to Frenchay, which the rider was given on arrival at Frenchay (meaning he had to go back to Southmead again). NHS money saved: £200. Time on the road: 3h25m

• East Bike: A single urgent delivery of CT scans and notes from the RUH hospital in Bath to the Frenchay neurosurgery unit. NHS money saved: £30. Time on the road: 1h45m.

• West Bike: Two deliveries of drugs from Weston-super-Mare to nursing homes in Congresbury and Burnham-on-Sea. NHS money saved: £40. Time on the road: 2h55m.

So the scores on the doors for tonight are £270 saved for the NHS and riders on the road for more than 8 hours. For my first night on duty as a coordinator I was quite wound up, so was really glad at 11:00pm when all our riders were safely home and I was able to give them a good nights sleep as no further calls came in.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

I have decided to blog another week on duty for the Freewheelers blood bikes. This time however I am not riding, I am coordinating.

Starting on Monday evening my job for the next week will be to take phone calls from hospitals needing our service. When I receive a request I then have to decide which of the three on-duty riders should make the delivery and track the progress until the rider is safely home.

Each job request results in at least 4 phone calls and a busy week can be 50 or more requests. I predict I won't be getting much sleep!

I will be keeping my eyes out for the most unusual call of the week. When I was on riding duty a couple of weeks ago I reckon I got the prize as I was called out to do an urgent transfer of rabies vaccine from Exeter to Bristol. Given that the UK doesn't have rabies this is a pretty unusual request. It turns out that a woman had been bitten by a dog while in India and needed to continue her vaccinations once she was back in the UK.

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

I am preparing for another week volunteer work on duty for the Freewheelers EVS blood bike charity. I will be on call all day today, every night this week from 7:00pm to 7:00am and all through the weekend until next Sunday lunchtime.

I am not going to blog this week on duty in detail as I did last time, however I may put the odd post on here if anything unusual happens. One thing I am not looking forward to is the weather. Winter is suddenly here, we have had three nights in a row of freezing temperatures and bikes and ice don't mix!

Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency

The UK's Institute of Advanced Motoring (IAM) regularly publishes driving tips. The latest tip is highly relevant to the work I do for blood bike charity Freewheelers EVS.

IAM Driving Tip 38: Emergency Vehicles offers advice on how to react when you see or hear an emergency vehicle approaching. As somebody who rides an emergency vehicle I am all for the promotion of this safety message. Please take the time to read the article, it is relevant regardless of where you live in the world.

Technorati tags: Emergency Motorcycle