Cops delay motorcycle funeral

Police almost stopped a biker from attending his own funeral after pulling over Britain’s only motorcycle hearse.

The funeral cortege was brought to a halt in a lay-by on the A303, after police noticed the Reverend Paul Sinclair was not wearing a helmet on his Triumph Speed Triple 900 with specially adapted coffin-sized sidecar.

Sinclair told the police that the hearse is actually registered with the DVLA as a Private Light Goods vehicle, not a motorcycle, as it weighs over 410kg, and his tax disc confirmed this. As such it is the same as any other funeral vehicle, and riders are not bound by the helmet law.

Despite this, and requests from two funeral directors in the procession, police held them for a further ten minutes as they took photos of the vehicle.

” It was fine for us to be pulled over and checked, but after I had shown them the tax disc and explained the situation, they should have let us go. If anything, we should have had a police escort, ” said Mr Sinclair.

” The two officers wouldn’t agree to doing the checks after the service, and if the family had seen it, they would have been very upset. I’ve done 72 funerals with this vehicle and normally the police are superb and helpful. We’ve often had police escorts and even two officers who normally protect the Queen! ”

” Funeral directors normally don’t wear seatbelts so they can exit the vehicle quickly and so they can turn to check on the procession. They also have different techniques for junctions etc, and the police normally accommodate these, such as the tail car pulling out first at right-hand turns to allow the group to stay together. If a procession does take liberties and go to far with bending the rules, the police will normally phone the funeral director after a service and explain what the problem was. I’ve never heard of a funeral being stopped en route before, particularly as the officer was on the hard shoulder with a speed gun, and could clearly see what was in the sidecar. Maybe it was because it was a motorbike? ”

Ironically, the deceased, 74-year-old Ronald Howell, was the only one who was wearing a helmet, as it was place on top of his coffin. ” His family told me he had never been stopped by the police once during his lifetime, but they managed to get him at his funeral. ”

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