Welsh cops answer your questions
Nearly 100,000 viewed our Facebook post about our day with the cops. We put your concerns to Sergeant Trystan Bevan
‘Loud pipes don’t cause road deaths!’ Norman Self
“In North Wales, a high percentage of bikes involved in fatal collisions had non-EU marked loud pipes fitted and small plates so there is a direct correlation. While I accept these loud pipes and small plates haven’t caused an accident, by stopping these bikes and talking to the riders hopefully we can prevent an accident. Also, you have to think about the residents of North Wales who are disturbed by the sound of a race exhaust. They are anti-social.”
‘A small plate is an easy conviction’ Tim Harvey
“Why would you have a small plate aside from avoiding police detection? The law is the law. Our camera vans can’t always read a small plate so if the bike is stolen we won’t be able to detect it and recover the bike.”
‘Bikers are an easy target, with limited resources haven’t you got something better to spend your time on?’ Steven Rushton
“It costs between £1.5-£2 million to investigate a fatal accident. We have had eight fatalities this year involving bikes; that’s £16 million spent on investigating fatal bike accidents that could have been spent elsewhere investigating other crimes.
“A serious accident can easily involve eight officers for over six hours, the road closed through four council workers, ambulance, fire service, collisions unit, doctors, possibly a helicopter. Accidents are a major use of police time. If it was a fatality, six officers would work the case for the next three to four weeks constantly.”
‘It’s all about money, not safety. Catch some proper criminals or is that too much hard work?’ Alun Owen
“Our number plate recognition software automatically alerts us to any car of interest from a drug dealer or murderer to a rapist and we regularly arrest offenders on our patrols as criminals travel by car. Any money made from our fines goes to central government, it isn’t used for road safety and we don’t have quotas or get bonuses on the amount of fines we hand out.”
‘It costs £1.5-£2m to investigate a fatal accident’ SERGEANT TRYSTAN BEVAN