A SUPER fast car parked up at Haynes Motor Museum on Sunday to raise awareness of a motorbike road safety campaign.
An Ariel Atom, one of the world’s fastest production cars, supported the free Safer Rider event at Haynes Motor Museum.
The campaign hopes to reduce the number of motorcyclists involved in road accidents. Around 20 per cent die on UK roads every year – most of these being men aged between 35 and 55. In Somerset, seven motorcyclists have died on roads so far this year, an increase of nearly 30 per cent for the same period in 2013.
Andy Parsons, a roads policing sergeant with the Tri Force Specialist Operations Collaboration, heads up the campaign.
He said: “Motorcyclists make up just one per cent of total road traffic but account for nearly 20 per cent of all road user deaths. They are roughly 35 times more likely to be killed in a road traffic collision than someone in a car and we really want to see these numbers reduced.
“Modern motorcycles are capable of extraordinary performance, with supercar levels of acceleration, braking and cornering. Unfortunately with this level of performance comes an increased risk of death or serious injury as a result of inexperience, lack of training and rider error.”
The Ariel Atom, which is manufactured in Somerset, has been called the closest thing to a motorbike with four wheels. Holder of BBC’s Top Gear lap record for nearly two years, the Atom has also beaten super bikes in races around a track.
The car used by Avon and Somerset Constabulary is based on the latest Atom 3.5R fitted with a supercharged 350bhp Honda engine, sequential gearbox and has a 0- 60mph time of 2.5 seconds.
Simon Saunders, director of Ariel, said: “Our business is driving very fast, but there is a time and a place. The Atom is designed to be driven to a race track, where you can drive to your limits in safety and in a professional environment designed for the purpose. The road really isn’t the place to explore your or your vehicle’s limits.
“We’re just about to launch an all new Ariel motorcycle and we want our bikes and customers to be as safe as they possibly can be as well, so this message is important to us. There’s always one certain loser in a motorcycle collision and that’s the motorcyclist.”
