Team MacDill offers motorcycle safety course

Volunteers from Team MacDill hosted a motorcycle safety course Dec. 5-8 2016, at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, to teach new riders the importance of riding safely on and off the installation.

The course weaved classroom instruction with range time, going over basic safety guidelines and tips for maintaining safety in different scenarios, and then applying those tips to riding.

“We teach the beginning skills needed to be a safe and successful rider,” said Mike Russell, director of safety, assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command. “Many of these students have never touched a bike before, so we start with the basic parts of the bike.”

The students learned where the clutch and throttle levers were as well as how to properly start the bike and ride it.

After each classroom portion, everyone gathered on the flight-line to apply what they learned in the lesson. There, they each had a bike assigned to them and took turns riding to allow them a close perspective on any dangers that may arise during their time riding.

This course is a strictly volunteer-based course for the instructors, which allowed a 2:1 instructor to student ratio, which allowed every student to be coached at the highest possible standard in this course.

“As coaches we set up an obstacle course ’”the peanut’” for the students to ride safely and practice the task we discussed,” said Russell. “Before we let them ride on the range, we discussed hand signals to allow communication from the instructors to the students while they are riding.”

This training as well as a motorcycle license is required before any active duty service member can legally ride on or off the installation.

“This course gives the rider experience and knowledge that they need to be a safe rider,” said Dave O’Neil, assigned to the 6th Air Mobility Wing Safety office. “This gives them insight and tells them why we do things; not just how to do them.”