Police usually want to prevent accidents, but earlier this week, they were making them happen.

Some of the top RCMP officers in the country were at St. John's International Airport for tips on investigating motorcycle accidents.

The pointers were coming from one of the world's leading experts in the field — Neil Robar of the Institute of Police Technology at the University of Florida.

"What does a skid mark tell us, what does a damaged motorcycle tell us, how long has this person been riding, has he got a real powerful bike, or a bike too big for him?" Robar noted.

Sgt. Randy Pack of the RCMP's Whitbourne detachment was one of the Mounties leading the course.

"Things happen really fast on a motorcycle. If you lock up the front brake you're going down in about point-four of a second, so it's really fast," Pack said.

"If you're going around a corner and you run over a pop can and you've got the front brake on, you're going to go down pretty quick."

The instruction — which also involved crashing a few bikes — was staged on a remote runway at the airport.