MORE money is being invested in a motorcycle safety campaign that has already been credited with saving lives.

North Yorkshire County Council is allocating £30,000 to the 95 Alive initiative, a partnership in which a wide group of organisations work together to cut road casualties.

It will support the police's Operation Halter, and further funding is promised for the next three years.

The money will go towards extra patrols and speed-checks, action days and the ground-breaking fast-tracking of extreme speeders, who can be stripped of their licences within days of being caught breaking a speed limit.

Road policing inspector Chris Charlton said: "North Yorkshire County Council has provided generous practical support and has invested heavily in nothing less than saving lives."

Officers have already spent 2,638 hours on Operation Halter this year, and brought hundreds of speeding riders to book.

Insp Charlton said: "This is a high-priority operation across North Yorkshire's 6,000 miles of roads, but despite the massive resources being put into motorcycle safety campaigns by the force, the county council and our partners, riders casualties are at a totally unacceptable level."

Following Halter's success last year, when motorcycle fatalities were reduced, the operation was relaunched in mid-March.

Insp Charlton said: "We are very well aware that motorcyclists are not the only road-users to take dangerous risks, just as they are not always at fault in the terrible accidents in which they are involved.

"However, I do point out that a quarter of those caught speeding were riders, a number quite disproportionate to the number of motorcycles on the road."

Operation Halter officers have stopped 3,860 vehicles this year -1,827 of them motorcycles. They have seized 17 bikes and 32 other vehicles that were uninsured.

The county's executive member for highways, Councillor John Fort, said: "North Yorkshire's roads and the high number of riders who flock to the Dales and Moors every time the sun comes out can make for a really dangerous combination. It is my hope that this money will help keep the county's roads safe and will play a part in saving lives."