The average Panda bobby only receives pretty basic driver training as far as I'm aware.
The young lady (plodess, bobess?) driving the panda car behind me this afternoon had no seatbelt on and was chatting to her radio / phone / gadget. I suspect the only thing keeping her to 30 mph was me on cruise control.
Edited by Old Navy on 01/08/2008 at 20:51
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I once took my son and girl friend into the town centre and followed a female police officer in a Panda car. She set off on red at traffic lights, even though priority was for oncoming traffic turning right and only the alertness and rapid reaction of the drivers involved prevented a pileup.
Next she was stationary at another set of lights, but way past the stop line. When the lights changed, she turned left through 90 degrees without any indication.
As I was turning left, I naturally followed her; she then cut across me whilst turning right at yet another set of lights featuring three lanes, two of which are right turn only. She then proceeded to stop a motorist for an apparent offence, so I carried on.
Arriving back home I rang police control and reported her levels of careless driving, but was advised merely to put my complaint in writing. I didn't bother because I know that such organisations look after their own.....
Edited by Stuartli on 02/08/2008 at 00:57
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Westpig, so are we to assume that the Police are expemt from all speed limits?
are the blues and twos not there to warn the public that you are exceeding the speed limit/posing a potential risk and to be alert and move out of your way, surely by not displaying your blues and twos when knowingly exceeding the speed limit you are leaving yourself open to a charge of driving without due care, of failing to maintain the health and safety of the public (yes we know that you can be charged under health and safety act[cue evil and possibly sick laugh] ) and to be honest instead of enhancing the reputuation of your profession you are really just making evryone think that there is one rule for you and another for the rest of us
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Come on 1jim... I've always regarded it as a police privilege. I very seldom see a police car or van driven dangerously, although they go up and down the main road outside my house every day, sometimes quite rapidly. No one can claim that they don't see or hear them coming either. It's noisy, and you sometimes wonder for a moment whether there is really such a rush, but frankly I don't mind. I'd be just as bad if I were plod and I bet you would too.
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I was on the very empty M602 doing 70 going into Manc one sunny eveing, about to change lanes, when a police volvo overtook me and nearly blew me into the council flats at the side of the road. It must have been at its maximum speed.
No lights, sirens, etc. I caught it at some lights, where you turn right to go down to Salford Quays, followed it, and it stopped at the Tesco metro. The driver got out and saw me, gave me "evils", and went in and bought his dinner.
Complaint brought response from some kind of senior officer - apparently the driver had had a report of a black audi moving around suspiciously.
No way of knowing otherwise but it looked very much like - "I'm a copper - empty road - hit the pedal."
What can I say? He might have been right. But i think the culture is for police drivers to do what the hell they like.
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Police bring a lot upon themselves.
Just like most other people I tend to go around clear 30 zones at a steady indicated 33-35 -- but if fuzz is behind me that drops to 28 pretty sharpish -- thereby winding the polis up, and I get tailgated for miles on end. Well I'm not going to deliberately put myself into a situation where a petty plod can do me for a marginal infraction!
Suspect that might be half the reason they end up blasting down the roads at double the speed limit -- simple frustration. Everyone else I see does the same as me, which must become incredible irritating after a while.
If the legal system wasn't so damned petty they wouldn't have to suffer would they?
Edited by Pugugly on 01/08/2008 at 22:04
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this has been covered before....
there are many, many reasons why you might not switch on the all the audible/visual warning equipment, yet still utilise some of the exemptions provided, such as speeding
e.g. you want to catch up with a miscreant, but not yet let on you're after them, otherwise they'll disappear before you know which way they've gone
or.. surveillance officers who need to speed up and catch up with others following a vehicle
or... you're making your way towards colleagues that you anticipate will need help, but at that given time it's not called as urgent
or..at night and local people have moaned about the noise
or.. reasonably urgent call, not important enough for you to consider putting on the lights/noise, but nevertheless needs dealing with sooner rather than later
etc, etc, etc
believe me with MDT (Mobile Data Terminals) and IDR (Incident Date Recorders) in most police cars, you'd be foolish indeed to mess about in one
how many jobs provide a vehicle to a driver that a supervisor can 'snail trail' the last 24 hours of its' journey, on a map, with average speeds given for any location?.. or the last 30 seconds is recorded before an accident, which shows every light used, the actual speed, two tones etc, on a graph.
Edited by Pugugly on 02/08/2008 at 00:31
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>there are many, many reasons>>
Yes, but how many or few times do such situations arise?
In 95 per cent of the cases I notice a speeding police vehicle, it is not on an emergency call or tailing suspects etc.
More likely it's lunch time.......
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I'm sure Westpig is right, however part of the explanation given to me about the near-miss from a volvo doing 120 mph was that he was going to take the officer's word for it.
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In 95 per cent of the cases I notice a speeding police vehicle it is not on an emergency call or tailing suspects etc.
how on earth would you know? if the driver for whatever reason has chosen to drive swiftly, but not utilise any warning equipment, how would you know what he/she is up to
and yes, there are dangers to driving faster without the use of warning equipment and you'd have to justify it
let me give you an example. You are driving a marked police van, it's friday night in a town and you are covering a large area, yours is the only van. Usually on friday nights you van's services are utilised constantly, with picking up prisoners. Due to the volatility of people arrested at these times, full of drink/drugs, more often than not you are racing about on blue light calls as the prisoners can be violent and unpredictable. On this occasion two officers have arrested someone, the suspect is handcuffed and is peaceful at this time, but they're stood o/s a pub and feel a tad vulnerable. You are 15 miles away and know you will get more calls soon and they might well be more urgent. Do you:
1, tootle in the traffic and take all day
2, use blue lamps/sirens for the whole journey for ostensibly a non urgent call
3, drive quite swiftly, sometimes put the blues on just to get through a busy junction but then revert back to swift but not emergency mode
which seems the most sensible?....
p.s.... and there will always be someone who thinks you've got a bag of chips on board and that's why you're in a hurry
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The policeman was speeding toward a "Black Audi acting suspiciously" or whatever.
To be fair, that sounds pretty specific. Yes, the senior officer who answered your question could be making that up. But why? We're professionals (in whatever capacity), they are professionals. Dont they have pride in knowing they have doen a good and fair job? Surely it'd be too easy to double check that kind of information on the police computer if you really really persisted and went even higher and made a nuisance of yourself. Only a berk would risk that.
Any system is going to have its wrinkles - I dont believe un-warranted speeding is a big problem. I very very rarely see a police car driven badly.
Lets face it. You're a policeman. You have (I dont know) 50-60K's worth of police car/equipment, you have a career with a certain amount of prestige which commands respect and a good wage and pension. Are you really going to mess about and jeopardise that leave aside the high levels of professionalism the job demands?
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tinyurl.com/597hhl
Edited by oilrag on 02/08/2008 at 11:40
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tinyurl.com/6fevx2
as to what really do
dvd
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As ever with this thread.......
.............there's one law for us & one for them others !
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Love the Wolseley 6/90 with silver bell on the front bumper on the Ladybird frontispiece DVD... Now that's what I call a police car.
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Those bells were a laugh........
On a shout travelling at Warp factor 4 - activate switch- cabin filled with noise of clanging bell.
Outside and ahead - nothing. vehicle noise and wind deadened sound.
Still gave you that bit of confidence.....
dvd
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About midnight or 1 am in the mid sixties, driving a hired Herald at the top of Park Lane having just left, with others, the UFO club in Tottenham Court Road, I heard one of those distant-doorbell sounds nearby and looked around for plod, but couldn't see him anywhere, so drove on.
A dirty blue Ford Zephyr with an Indian asleep or unconscious in the back seat cut in furiously in front of me. I had assumed its passengers were hooligans from south of the river or grubby provincial salesmen, but they were CID. The driver was a Scot and not best pleased. He accused me of driving on after being belled to stop. I said I had heard a bell but didn't realise they were police.
'What did you think I was, a bellringer?' bawled the detective furiously. He let us go however, after saying he had stopped us for having the headlights on, then uncommon in areas with street lighting as people feared flat batteries in those days and dynamos weren't very good at urban speeds. Bit backward of him, I thought.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 02/08/2008 at 21:17
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first police vehicles I drove still had bells in them...they were absolutely useless
can remember driving down Piccadilly in the station van responding to an 'urgent assistance' at Piccadilly Circus... the bell stopped working, because it was a switch that couldn't be pressed to be permanently on i.e. it was sprung to the 'off' position... and i'd used it so much and so vigorously that I snapped it in half... so after that i used the van's horn.. and by using it at the right amount of frequency it vaguely sounded like the area car's two tones... but then that stopped working as well
so that only left me with the headlights on main beam and a little blue lamp in the middle of the roof, that no one could see and in any case only revolved at every other lamp post
the sensible thing would have been to give up at that stage...but... being young and foolish and knowing some colleagues were getting their head's kicked in I continued
.... and if a pedestrian gave me cause for concern and I worried they were going to step out, i'd pull the hand brake up and lock the back wheels up, which obviously caused a loud skidding sound, they'd look up and see me... and I could safely continue
never did find that in Roadcraft though...:-)
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Was that one of those shiny sharp-edged Commer (I think) black marias Wp, the sort hardly anyone had except the police?
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Lud,
I'm not that old!
'DYU549V' dark blue Ford Transit, over 80,000 miles on it when we got rid and smoking like a good 'un...they swapped it for a white 'B' reg Sherpa.. the chaps begged the transport people to let us have the Transit back (as it was designated as a 'spare' and was still about) as the Sherpas were so bad.
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You just pipped me Wp, I had realised that those Commers dated from my early twenties and was going to suggest Austin or Morris J4 which I think did the job for a while.
Transit? Luxury!
Do you remember the Sweeney episode when all the CID jump into the back of an unmarked Transit with no seats that is then driven flying-squad supersonic through heavy London traffic in the West End with everyone rolling about on the floor? Well cool.
John Thaw who was married to a friend of my wife came into a party I was at once, and he noticed various people who shall be nameless giving starts of nervous alarm, before they remembered he wasn't a real copper. Apparently it happened to him all the time.
:o}
Edited by Lud on 02/08/2008 at 20:45
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The Sweeney used to drive above the limit - none of this PC whining in those days.
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But it's better (as well as more strictly accurate in the historical sense) with the expletive suggested DD, and you have to imagine a fairly thick Glaswegian delivery to go with the tone of mad fury.
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I must be particularly unobservant, having never noticed Brian Plectrum, the 66 foot tall policeman.
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