Killspills Latest News
NATIONAL BIKESAFE SHOW 2008
150 bikes including the KillSpills team and Marshals rode from the famous Ace Cafe London to the National BikeSafe show 2008 held at the Metropolitan Police training centre in Hendon.
Commenting on the turnout Campaign leader Stephen Edwards said “Its great to be back at the Ace Cafe, its KillSpills spiritual home, the turnout has been greater than we expected, especially given the cold weather, it’s important that KillSpills organises a ride out to this show, expressing our thanks and gratitude to the Metropolitan Police BikeSafe London Team, and especially Sergeant Paul Mostyn for all the support they have given us over the years. This was a first for KillSpills; we had a stand at the show and an opportunity to tell bikers what we are doing to reduce the occurrence of diesel spills”
The ride set off at 10:45 and made its way along the North Circular Road to the A41. Stephen continued “a police car popped into the Ace Cafe to see if we were all OK and kept a watchful eye over us as we made our way to Hendon, at one particular junction when we went from the North Circular road onto the A41 the police stopped the traffic for us to ensure all the bikes could negotiate the junction safely, this was not pre-arranged, and a very nice gesture from the officers concerned”
All in all it was a great day, if KillSpills was ever in any doubt that the work we were doing wasn’t important, the thousands of bikers out there all had a horror story to tell us about diesel spills. One thing for sure, our work isn’t over yet.
Also worth mentioning here, and contrary to a lot of belief, the Department for Transport are doing a lot of work in this field. We have a National Motorcycling Strategy, the National Motorcycle Council has set up four sub groups to address the issues raised in the strategy,. Action 10 of the strategy covers the dangers of diesel spills to motorcyclists. KillSpills sit on several of these sub groups, and have responsibility for leading some of the actions. The DfT have funded a print run of 200,000 anti diesel spill leaflets, these are being distributed around the road haulage industry, the DfT are also commissioning a study to identify the best way to render the roads safe following a spill, the aim of this is to provide national guidelines for cleaning up diesel spills to all Local Authorities.
A lot of work is being done to improve our safety, motorcycling is being taken seriously and is being seen as a greener alternative to the car.
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Latest news Oct 2007 from Steve Edwards
We are about to submit our world record attempt to Guinness World Records from this years 617 Rally, we had 488 bikes on track with 148 different types of bikes. We are just waiting for our final witness statement, then we can send off the pack.
The Team are looking into what event(s) to run next year and we will hopefully be in a position to advise you of our thoughts within the next month.
Also we have been invited to Switzerland to brief the European Motorcycling Federation what we have been doing in the UK to combat diesel spills, this will take place at the end of October. Unfortunately I have something else on that day, so I cant go, Ash from the team drew the short straw.
I am attending a National Motorcycle Council sub group next week at the Department for Transport. The DfT have funded 200,000 killspills anti diesl spill leaflets, and we now have a letter, agreed by the DfT, MPs and Peers to send out to the road haulage industry. The DfT have again shown their backing for KillSpills by letting us use the THINK! logo on our letterhead. I am currently compiling a list of companies who we are going to write to
Are there any companies out there that you think we should target with this information? If so send the details to steve.killspills@bmf.co.uk
Thanks for continuing to support KillSpills, we will ensure that your voice is listened to in Whitehall. I will be pressing for the DfT to release the findings of the on line survey a lot of you completed at our request. Its fine them asking for our views, but we need to know what they are going to do with them. I know, because I have attended the meetings, but I need the OK from the Department, before I share them with you, but they are listening.
