WATCH: Why you’ll notice a lot more motorbike cops this week

• BC RCMP Highway Patrol
• Two-week training program
• Officers will be pulling people over this week for training

It’s back to driving school for RCMP motorcycle enthusiasts as they’ve been honing their riding skills to prove they have what it takes to join the BC Highway Patrol unit.

Officers from across the province will be on the streets of Kelowna this week after their one-week training course last week. They went through their paces at a parking lot at UBCO.

“RCMP officers ...are learning the basic skills of how to be a policeman on a motorcycle,” Inspector Dale Somerville told Kelowna10. “The first week is spent on the track specializing their skills [and] the second week is spent out on the road, learning how to do enforcement on motorcycles.”

Somerville said the officers all know how to ride, but they still need to practice new skills, mainly slow speed training and quick decision making.

“These are 800-pound motorcycles, and if these members don’t learn how to use them at a slow speed, they’re going to tip over,” Somerville explained. “We have to go around parked cars; we have to do sharp U-turns to go after violators, so all these skills take practice.”

The two motorcycles used by the RCMP are the Harley Davidson Road Kings and the BMW R1200P. Motorbikes are viewed by the agency as a good traffic enforcement tool since they can go places larger vehicles can’t.

“They specialize in going after distracted drivers and cell phones, that’s one of our leading causes of fatal crashes in the province right now,” Somerville said.

Despite the rainy conditions during their training, the 14 students were eager to work on their riding in preparation for their skill test on Monday. If they pass, they will move onto week two where they will be out on the streets.

“You may get pulled over by one of us, you may wonder, what the heck was that for?” he said. “It’s probably for nothing, we need to pull you over for our own training, that’s all.”

In the Kelowna unit, the BC Highway Patrol has two motorcycles, and the city has another two for the municipal traffic section.