A HAMPSHIRE coroner has warned of the dangers of driving at speed after the death of a young motorcyclist.

Thomas Reeves, 24, was killed in a collision with a transit van at Lopcombe Corner near Stockbridge.

The experienced motorcyclist was travelling the 60pmh A30 from Stockbridge to Salisbury on July 12 when he clipped the back of a tipper van turning into Hollom Down Road, the inquest heard.

Mr Reeves of Trenchard Avenue in Winterbourne Gunner, near Salisbury, suffered severe head injuries after he lost control of his black Honda Fireblade.

Central Hampshire coroner Simon Burge recorded a verdict of accidental death and said Mr Reeves "must have been travelling pretty fast.”

“It’s a warning to the motorcyclists to think very carefully before they take bikes out on to the road at speed,” Mr Burge said.

The inquest heard a doctor, who was a passenger in a passing car, stopped and attempted to resuscitate the injured biker while waiting for an ambulance.

In a statement read out at the inquest, Dr Elizabeth Hockney, from Twickenham, said: “I looked at him and I instantly thought he was dead. I couldn’t detect a pulse or breathing.”

The driver of the Ford Transit tipper van told Mr Burge he’d been transporting a Vauxhall Corsa to Noon’s Scrapyard when the motorcyclist had clipped the rear passenger-side wheel of the car, which had been overhanging the flatbed.

Thomas’s father, Mr Reeves, said: “He was very experienced and I taught him how to go about it properly. We used to do track days, he was a fast driver, there’s no doubt about that but I can’t understand, he would’ve seen. It’s a bizarre situation.

“If you were driving a car you wouldn’t just plough into the back of someone.”

PC Simon Bishop, the officer in charge of the investigation, said: “The vehicle bounced rather like a rugby ball,” he said. “It was travelling at least at the speed limits.” Debris from the collision was found up to 30 metres from the point of impact, the inquest heard.