With the weather improving the winding country roads of the borough are an attractive proposition for many bike owners, but the road safety partnership is keen to issue a word of warning.

Road safety officer Andy Adlington, who crashed motorbikes twice when he was a teenager, said: "Both crashes happened when I was living for the moment and had no responsibilities. The first time all I could remember was trying to turn left then waking up in the middle of the road.

"The next time a car turned right in front of me and I woke up in hospital with a breathing tube up my nose. My fibre glass helmet had split in two and the police said that I would've been dead if I'd been speeding when it happened.

"Since I had my crashes, the roads have got busier and the bikes have
become more powerful.

"In 2006, more than a quarter of the people killed or seriously injured on Derbyshire roads were bikers. That's a big number when you consider that bikers make up just over four per cent of the county's road users."

Overall, the number of people killed or seriously injured on Derbyshire roads dropped by 30 per cent between 1997 and 2006 – but biker casualty figures have shown no such improvement.

Partnership manager Robert Hill said: "Don't get caught out in
Derbyshire is our message to bikers. We are warning them to watch out for difficult roads, speed cameras and police patrols throughout the 2008 leisure biking season."

Derbyshire Police are running Operation Focus over the summer with speed traps being used at crash hot spots.

Sandra Mir, head of nursing for Derbyshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said bikers' injuries were generally more extreme because they were not protected by the shell of their vehicle.