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Blood Bikes: the bikers that could save your life

December 20, 2010 By 4 Comments

This is a clip from Channel 5′s Emergency Bikers. This particular clip features Blood Bikes from Freewheelers EVS and Severn Freewheelers.

Description taken from their website: Blood bikes are a volunteers that use motorcycles (and sometimes cars) to provide an out-of-hours courier service to hospitals and other health institutions within their area. The charities carry urgently needed medical items such as blood, biological samples, medical notes, x-rays and scans. The service is offered free of charge to the NHS and all members are unpaid volunteers.

If the blood bikes didn’t exist, the NHS would be paying for taxis or ambulances to transport blood, tissues and medical supplies. Despite the amount of money that they save the NHS, blood bikes are ridden by volunteers and funded entirely through donations.

The blood bikes need your help to keep going. They need riders, they need volunteers to answer the phones and help co-ordinate, they need people to go to shows and events to raise awareness, and they need donations.

I would very much like to ride for the Severn Freewheelers. Unfortunately what is stopping me is the training. Advanced Rider Training is a requirement before riding blood bikes, and quite rightly so. I became a member about a year ago and started to take my advanced rider training with Redditch Advanced Motorcycle Group (RAMG) but unfortunately I haven’t been able to dedicate the time to go out riding for most of the day every second Sunday, nor have I been able to afford the full tank of petrol and lunch out that each training trip would entail. Ironically, my insomnia makes me perfectly placed to ride blood bikes from 7pm to 7am, but the same insomnia makes it extremely difficult for me to undertake observed rides for training at 9am! I’m currently looking in to alternative ways to get trained up so that I can volunteer a few nights a month to ride a blood bike.

Useful Links

National Association of Blood Bikes

Severn Freewheelers

Prescott Bike Festival - Fundraising for Blood Bikes in April 2011

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  • Mikey

    Do persevere with your training, even if you don’t go ahead to become a blood biker - it will save your life one day. My recommendation to go forward with your training is twofold - first, get a copy of Mike Waite’s excellent DVD from http://www.mikewaite.co.uk and second, go the RoSPA route - it is a much better solution IMHO and you may well find you are already at a level to get a good RoSPA pass - especially if you watch the Mike Waite DVD and put everything into practice. I’m not connected with him in any way, I’m just a blood bikers who swears by what he teaches!

  • Biker Chick Liz

    i would like to become a blood biker could someone please tell me how i go about it
    Many Thanks
    Biker Chick

    • http://www.latentexistence.me.uk/ Steven Sumpter

      You need to contact your local group. You can find contact details here. http://www.bloodbikes.org.uk/

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