This has been the worst year for motorcycle fatalities in living memory; more than 40 riders died on Western Cape roads in the first nine months of 2012, more than half as a result of being knocked down by another vehicle. Which made it all the more poignant to be attending the 12th annual Wheels Motorcycle Club skills campaign.
What started as a private venture to increase the skill level of club members and their friends has become as public-private partnership between the provincial department of community safety, the Gene Louw traffic college in Brackenfell and the seasoned riding instructors of the Western Province Motor Club at Killarney - proof, if ever proof were needed, that such partnerships work when the will to get the job done outweighs the politics involved.
And it's all about rider safety on a very personal level, about teaching riders with varying levels of experience the sometimes counterintuitive techniques that can get you out of trouble when somebody else does something really stupid.
DO NO HARM
This year's safety campaign started at the Gene Louw traffic college in Brackenfell on 16 September with a first-aid briefing by Warren Cupido of South African Paramedic Services.
But rather than lecture the riders, some of whom had more than four decades on two wheels behind them, he asked them for the benefit of their experience - what they'd learned from accidents involving riding buddies, or even themselves.
A lively discussion followed, but the consensus was clear: First, do no harm; staunch blood loss, if any, move the fallen rider as little as possible and maintain the status quo until the professionals get there.
There was general agreement that a crashed rider's helmet should only be removed if absolutely necessary but, if it is necessary, there is a particular technique by which a helmet can be removed without moving or aggravating a possible neck injury, which Cupido and an assistant demonstrated.
A young mechanic from Bassies Motorcycles in Ottery briefed the riders about really basic maintenance - the detail work we need to do on our bikes because the bike techs don't have time to do it when your machine is in for service, such as checking tyre pressures (there is absolutely no such thing as a motorcycle tyre that doesn't leak) and giving the stand pivot and lever linkages a squirt of lubricant on a regular basis.
SERIOUS ABOUT SAFETY
Then the group moved outside, to where the instructors had marked out seven exercises with orange cones, ranging from precision steering to lane-splitting to an ultra-tight slalom and emergency lane changes.
The 78 participants ranged in age from 16 to 60, their bikes from scooters and 125s to huge BMW beetle-crushers, but they all had one thing in common - they were serious about being safer riders.
Three weeks later 55 riders - many of them the same as had attended the first leg - turned out at Killarney where the safety campaign moved up a gear, with four exercises laid out at various points around the circuit - giant slalom, emergency braking, countersteering and high-speed cornering.
All morning the riders moved from one exercise to the next, conferring with the instructors, encouraging each other and getting the most from each run.
SMOOTH LINES
Then, in the afternoon, the track was cleared and the riders went out to put what they'd learned into practice, trying to ride the circuit as smoothly as possible, rather than as quickly as possible - and always the instructors were on hand to offer advice on technique and show riders the smoothest lines around the corners.
A number of the riders gained significantly in terms of confidence in their machines; every rider we spoke to said they'd learned something, no matter how long they'd been riding.
Which is why the guys from Wheels do it; there's no way to quantify the outcome of what they do, but if one rider avoids a big crash because of something he learned during the Wheels Safety Campaign, they reckon it will have been worth the effort.