Photo: USAF
Perhaps one of the most iconic scenes in cinema is the one showing a young Tom Cruise on the back of a Kawasaki GPz900R racing an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet as it took off. It's a scene from the original Top Gun, obviously, and it helped a lot with linking the image of the country's aviators to that of skilled motorcycle riders.
But the tie American pilots and other U.S. Air Force (USAF) personnel have with motorcycles goes much further back in time than that. And this unbreakable connection will probably continue to resist for more years to come, perhaps even strengthen. And that, it seems, is not only a reason of pride for the military branch., but also reason for concern.
You all know how pilots go in their fighter jets and often travel at speeds greater than that of sound, many miles in the air, in missions that can prove very dangerous at times. But that's the nature of the job, and all parties involved accept it.
What the USAF can't accept is the fact that its people can get hurt while riding a motorcycle. So this week, as most of the world moves into a period of longer and warmer days, it issued a sort of warning for the ones who like to ride motorcycles in their time off.
The decision was taken after last year the Department of the Air Force (DAF) lost no less than 22 of its people to motorcycle accidents. Of them, 16 died after crashing at speed that were 25 miles per hour (40 kph) over the speed limit, while the rest had some sort of intoxicating substance in their bodies.
To make sure that doesn't happen this year as well, the USAF will kick off on March 21 an awareness campaign with a very proactive component to it.
More to the point, all the riders that are on the department's payroll will be contacted for registration purposes. Once that is out of the way, each of these people will have to attend training courses.
A special focus will be placed on unregistered riders and getting them up to code because, says DAF, ten of the people it lost last year were not registered in the department's Motorcycle Unit Safety Tracking Tool. That's a system meant to collect data on riders, including what training each of them received.
"This mandatory training and tracking system is vital to serving motorcycle riders and could save lives," DAF says in a statement.
In case you didn't know this already, learn that the USAF tells motorcycling very seriously. Each of its units has a so-called motorcycle safety representative that is tasked with making sure the mandatory requirements are met, and that riders are in the loop with what's required of them.
You all know how pilots go in their fighter jets and often travel at speeds greater than that of sound, many miles in the air, in missions that can prove very dangerous at times. But that's the nature of the job, and all parties involved accept it.
What the USAF can't accept is the fact that its people can get hurt while riding a motorcycle. So this week, as most of the world moves into a period of longer and warmer days, it issued a sort of warning for the ones who like to ride motorcycles in their time off.
The decision was taken after last year the Department of the Air Force (DAF) lost no less than 22 of its people to motorcycle accidents. Of them, 16 died after crashing at speed that were 25 miles per hour (40 kph) over the speed limit, while the rest had some sort of intoxicating substance in their bodies.
To make sure that doesn't happen this year as well, the USAF will kick off on March 21 an awareness campaign with a very proactive component to it.
More to the point, all the riders that are on the department's payroll will be contacted for registration purposes. Once that is out of the way, each of these people will have to attend training courses.
A special focus will be placed on unregistered riders and getting them up to code because, says DAF, ten of the people it lost last year were not registered in the department's Motorcycle Unit Safety Tracking Tool. That's a system meant to collect data on riders, including what training each of them received.
"This mandatory training and tracking system is vital to serving motorcycle riders and could save lives," DAF says in a statement.
In case you didn't know this already, learn that the USAF tells motorcycling very seriously. Each of its units has a so-called motorcycle safety representative that is tasked with making sure the mandatory requirements are met, and that riders are in the loop with what's required of them.
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