 Well, we've asked you here today to talk about some news that we find concerning the Denver Police Department along with the mayor's office this year. We've invoked vision zero and zero serious injury crashes in the city and county of Denver. Part of that is through information with the public that we deem important and necessary in trying to reduce our motorcycle and multi-modal transportation area city. We want to make sure our drive safely to their destination. Today we want to talk specifically about our motorcycle operators, riders and passengers. Just to share with you, we're approaching the midway mark of 2016 and we're looking at some of the numbers compared to last year. For 2016, so far this year, we have recorded 129 serious bodily injury traffic crashes. It's a little over 20% of our crashes, our serious injury crashes, are represented by motorcycles. Compared to last year in 2015, interestingly enough, we had the exact same number, 26. We had a higher number of serious injury crashes, 134. So that comparison is 31 or the decline in that. Bothers them again because we're trying to see a reduction. When we start to talk about our 19 fatal traffic crashes, total number of crashes is down, six of those involve motorcycles. For 2015, by comparison, 24 fatal crashes. Again, oddly enough, six involving motorcycles. But because of the number of traffic accidents, fatal accidents all together, what we have is last year, 25% of our fatal crashes involved motorcycles. This year, that number is 31.5%. So from a percentage standpoint, we're on the increase. So again, that's bothersome to us as a result of our commitment to Vision Zero. And we're looking to zero fatal injury crashes, zero serious injury crashes. With me today, I've asked members of our motorcycle unit, enforcement unit, also our trainer, to help demonstrate what we're talking about. How do we keep motorcyclists safe in the city and county of Denver? Well, first of all, we're going to talk about training at the top of the list. Formalized motorcycle operator training is a must. In order to get an endorsement in Colorado, you must pass a test, a specific test for motorcycles. And the best way to get the endorsement, I think, is going to go through that formalized training. One of our trainers here today, Corporal Creason, will talk a little bit about some maneuvers we want to demonstrate. The point we want to make here today is this. A lot of our motorcycle traffic fatalities are a result of panic breaking. You can conduct emergency braking on a motorcycle and ride that out. But panic breaking is very often fatal and leads to serious injuries. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And also low speed maneuvers. We want to talk about that. So we're going to show two maneuvers today. The emergency braking and then a low speed maneuver to help build your skill set. I'm going to ask riders, if you are unable to perform these two maneuvers we're going to show today, you need to rethink, should I really be on a motorcycle in traffic before I've had good formalized training? Either through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation or through one of the motorcycle operator safety training organizations that are available through the CDOT website. We'll have that website address for you before the end of this cast. So Corporal Creason, if you can talk a little bit about the maneuvers that we're going to see today. So today I have with me my Sergeant, Sergeant Troy Zimmerman. He's going to be our demo guy. Couple of different maneuvers we're going to perform for you today is one, a figure eight pattern. The figure eight pattern in this particular space is equivalent to about four or five parking spaces in a normal parking lot where it's painted. You definitely don't need cones. You don't need measuring tools or any of that stuff. It's totally available in any painted parking lot. And we ask that you go out and you do and you perform this slow type maneuver. What you're getting out of this is your head and eyes. Your head and eyes lead the bike. You turn your head prior to turning the bike. It's your throttle clutch and brake and it's control of the motorcycle. The next thing we're going to perform is two braking exercises. We'll show you that at 40, 45 miles an hour, what all rear wheel braking looks like and why that is not a good idea. And what we're finding in some of these accidents, that's exactly what we get. We're going to all rear wheel braking only. And believe it or not, 90, 95% of your braking capacity and capability on this bike is in the front end. Okay? It is front wheel braking. And we will show you the proper way to brake and the proper way to do a combination braking on this bike to get it shut down and we'll show you the distances between the two. And the reason why this is so important and the reason why we ask you to practice is it's a diminishing skill. We here in the state of Colorado, we're fortunate enough to have over 300 days of sunlight a year, daylight a year, so we pretty much ride year around. But there are a few months in the first part of the year, we don't ride. So what we do is we jump on the bike the first sunny day we have and it's clear roads and we go out and we revert back to car driving and how we perform braking in a car. And then in emergency situation, it's muscle memory, you go right back to rear wheel, you stomp on the brake with your foot, just like you would in a car. That's literally 5% of your braking capacity on a bike. And we'll show you the difference when it's properly done versus all rear wheel braking and how far that actually is and we'll go ahead and do some measurements for you. For the most part, especially in town, when we're coming up on street lights and controlled intersections and things like that, the right hand never comes up to the front brake. It's all rear wheel braking and it's all compression style braking, just exactly what you would do in a car. Okay, it's very slow pushing on the rear brake with your pedal, with your foot, administering the rear brake and coming to a slow controlled stop. And what you don't realize is at higher speeds, there becomes a point where that tire won't grip anymore because there's only a tire patch about four inches square that's making contact with the pavement. And what happens is when you're moving those kinds of speeds, you depress that rear brake while most of your inertia of your body is going forward and then the tire ends up breaking contact with the ground, you only get about 5% of your braking capacity with just the rear brake. Yes, or not properly braking. And we ask that you use that front brake because 90-95% of your braking capacity on this bike is in the front brake, but it needs to be done properly so that you don't lock that front brake. And really the issue there is if you're using rear brake only when it's not an emergency, you're training yourself to, in an emergency, just go for that rear brake. And that's when it turns bad for our motorcycle operator and riders. You ride like you practice. You revert back to muscle memory. And that's exactly what the sergeant Farr is talking about. I do have that. For 2016, I haven't looked back in any years. For this current year, 2016, five of our six Motorcycle Fatal 4 this year. And what we're seeing in those when the motor operators at fault, it's typically high speeds are involved. And as a result of that, with or without the helmet, with or without the safety gear, that high speed puts you at a greater risk of serious injury and fatal injury when you have that collision. For the one case that the operator is not at fault, it's a motorist who's turned left in front of an oncoming motorcyclist. And that's probably our greatest danger to our motorcycle operators when they interact with a motor vehicle. For the most part, it's that left turn. Motor operators tell us, I didn't see them until they were too late. They were too close. Or I didn't see them until the collision. And so we have to tell our motor operators, be aggressively looking for the motorcycles, especially this time of year, when we know they're going to be taking advantage of the 80 degree weather. Give enough space for that motorcycle to come. A lot of folks look at the motorcycle because it's so much smaller than a car, they misjudge how far away it is. They misjudge it's not quite a danger to me, as say an 18-wheeler coming at the same rate, at the same distance, so I don't have that same need to wait another second or two, gauge where it's at, how fast it's on approach, give that motorcycle operator an opportunity to pass by before you make your left turn. You have to drive defensively. There is no letting your in a number of cases where someone waiting in a left turn lane, not at an intersection, waiting to pull into a driveway nice and they wave them, hey, make your turn. Well, they make that turn across one or two lanes, forgetting that that lane traffic is moving there and they miss the motorcycles coming up that last lane. So really what we're asking our motor operators is, include in that, because they are two-wheeled articulated vehicles and you see the scooters are very popular in the greater metro area, so we need to be on the lookout for them. It's not and in fact what we find is for our crashes somewhere around half, crashes involve somebody who is not wearing a helmet. What we do know about that is in the state of car required to wear eye protection, if you are not yet 18, doesn't matter if you're an operator or a rider, you are required to wear a helmet. What we know about the helmets is they do save lives. Our last traffic fatality, his injury came from his head and we believe, certainly I believe, a helmet would have made a difference. Certainly, I'll say this as a Colorado being typically labeled a libertarian state, we like to have our freedom. We like to make our decisions. Mike likes that idea. Sergeant Farr, however, he knows that helmets save lives and figure that out, but from my practice on scenes, I know helmets save lives. So the takeaway here is this. For our motorcycle operators, get the training, formalized training. You have Motorcycle Safety Foundation, the CDOT website has our motorcycle operator safety training websites. There's a control your motorcycle through practice. We'll show you that. Ride sober. Alcohol, we know 60% of our fatal crashes involve some kind of impairment. Ride sober and then have the safety equipment. Currently, that would be the proper riding gear, the gloves that require it. Certainly, a helmet makes a difference in those crashes. For our motor vehicle operators, watch for the bike riders. They're out there. Watch for the scooter riders. Look for them aggressively. Opportunity to stop. We can bring a motorcycle to a stop in a very short distance as compared to a motor vehicle and also drives over. So that's our message.