Research and Evidence Base

Our Research and Evidence Base

The DocBike charity isn’t about riding around on a flashy bike and achieving little. Research and evidence form the cornerstones of the charity. We use research to:

• Identify those motorcyclists who are most likely to be involved in a serious collision in the future
• Identify what things are most likely to get a biker killed or seriously injured
• Work out what strategies actually work to avoid being in a bike crash
• Examine whether the way we engage with motorcyclists actually reduces their future crash risk.

PhD Studentship in Motorcycle Injury Prevention

In 2019, having sought funding through industry, DocBike match-funded a 3-year PhD Studentship with Bournemouth University, examining motorcyclists with and without advanced training and tracking their hazard perception across a range of urban and rural scenarios.

Shel Silva was successful in her application to become our first-ever PhD student. You can read and watch a BBC News clip on her work here.

A Research Strategy to Deliver!

As a charity, we recognise the potential for a coordinated, well-structured and well-delivered research strategy into motorcycle injury prevention and engagement effectiveness.

In 2024, working in collaboration with Dorset County Hospital, successfully secured seed funding from the Wessex Health Partners to create an evaluation tool to assess over a decade of engagement and education work by DocBike in Dorset.

In 2025, as a direct result of this seed funding project, the Motorcycle Injury Prevention Network (MIPnet) was born. This is a very exciting time. Find out more about MIPnet and what we hope to achieve here.

We Don’t Keep our Findings to Ourselves!

We are passionate about sharing what we discover through our engagement and research with others around the country and around the world. We work with a large number of government and non-government partners to help make a real difference.

The DocBike charity also presents its findings at major events around the UK on a regular basis, including to date:

• The National Major Trauma Networks conference
• The Association of Air Ambulances conference
• The National Fire Bikes conference
• The National Fire Chief’s Council’s Road Safety Seminar
• The National Institute for Health Research Seminar on Research Partnerships
• The Road Safety GB conference
• The Trauma Care conference

As a charity, we have the freedom to investigate very exciting strands that might be difficult to achieve as part of an organisation with other pressing priorities. The DocBike is the only charity dedicated solely to reducing the number of deaths and critical injuries in motorcyclists. We strive to be excellent in everything that we do, with the aim of eradicating motorcycle deaths and serious injuries from the roads in the UK.