YORKSHIRE Air Ambulance is urging holiday-goers to stay safe this bank holiday to prevent a rise in incidents across the region.

Over the last four years, the charity has responded to 148 incidents on UK bank holidays across Easter, spring bank and Christmas. There has been almost a 10 per cent increase incidents since 2018.

Paul Holmes, clinical operations manager at Yorkshire Air Ambulance, said: "Bank holidays are a busy time not only for ourselves, but many emergency services as more people are out and about across the UK enjoying themselves and not always thinking about the necessary precautions.

"While we want people to enjoy their summer, we would also like to urge everyone to remain safe and be aware of common hazards that these busy time periods may bring."

The most common bank holiday incidents are road traffic collisions and motorcycle incidents, of which within the last four years there have been 18. In 2020, the most common incident type was cycling.

Men were involved in nearly three times more incidents than women and the most common patient ages were between 40 – 65-years-old.

This Easter saw the charity respond to 21 incidents across the region, including serious incidents across some of Yorkshire’s motorways.