That’s understandable, and I’d defintely be interested in investigating the effectiveness of a bike team vs foot team in various types of search. It’s a very necessary question to be asked, as obviously a foot team is cheaper to kit out!!

Actually I don’t have any issue with safety and I can certainly see where the bikes have a support role within SAR. My question surrounds the quality of searches undertaken on a bike versus other methods and this is where i’d like to see more work done.

I’m definitely, 100% NOT against it. I think it is an exciting area of development.

I believe that’s why the team leader acts as ‘health and safety’, warning riders of any obstacles etc. I think people get used to it – after all, we don’t look where we’re putting our feet while searching normally. Like I said, people wouldn’t search the full cube on the bike anyway, only round to one side and towards the front and checks behind.

More work definitly needs to be done before any strong evidence either way is found, but it looks promising that there would be some role for bikes in SAR.

Another thing to note – WilSAR don’t just deploy anyone who can cycle, they use very experienced, capable, fit cyclists who demoponstrate an ability to stay on the bike over very rough ground, cycle right over the top of obstacles and have exceptional bike control. The introductory course I went on involved riding over a landrover wheel, down a set of steps, on roads and through a woodland area with roots and rough ground. We also had to demonstrate that we could stay on the bikes at very low speed without losing control, weave through cones and do tight turns. I don’t think I am yet at the required standard lets just say!!!!! But it was a very good day and gave an insight into what the bike team do, and how good a rider you need to be.

Does that set some of your safety concerns at rest?

The exercise results sound very interesting. Considering that the rider would need to be looking at where they were cycling just as much as they were searching do you have any idea why this exercise showed such a difference? Im think that the bike searchers were able to get much closer to the dummies and were higher up but surely those advantages would be negated by the need to ‘watch where you were cycling’

Comparing bike searches to car searches is certainly one thing but for route and path in wooded areas where the danger to the cyclist, who isn’t concentrating on riding, increases?

I’d love to see more work on this, but I believe I could be convinced

WilSAR regularly use bike search teams and have 4 mountain bikes as poart of team kit. As I understand, they are deployed to search routes and paths very fast, and are used as comms relay in bad areas where there are enough resources.

They have done an exercise looking at the relative rates of detection between bike searchers and car searchers. Sweeping through a village which was describes as looking like a battle ground – manikins everywhere, each with part visible from the road – the bike team picked up about half of the manikins in the first sweep, and car team found none. This provides some evidence that a bike team on a route and path can do a sweep through at speed and have a relatively good success rate.

The bike team is organised so that the TL is responsible for health and safety and searches when they can. The other two searchers search one side of the cube each. Therefore one searcher cube is maintained by the three team members working together.

What are your veiws?

As for the association with ACPO, there’s not enough information provided regarding the link to draw any conclusions.