You did WHAT?

Picture this:

You are an Area Car driver. You are a highly trained police driver. You are trained to carry out pursuits. You are also a very experienced officer..

So now that you have the idea of who you are... you now get the scene setting phase.

You are pulling on to a dual carriageway down the slip road when you spot a car going through in your direction at high speed, you catch the index plate as your headlights hit back of the vehicle. You start trying to catch up and pass the index that you got.

The vehicle is stolen.

The vehicle is a V8 BMW. Something capable of very high speeds and well, lets just say that your average police car is a gutless diesel and it's overloaded with traffic cones and signs! You keep your distance trying not to spook the driver of the stolen BMW up ahead.

You have been following it for some minutes now across several divisions of Southernshire. 

You have not activated your blue lights because you are trying to get other units to come on to the road ahead of your location. You know that if you activate blues then it's all over.

Here goes...

A traffic unit comes steaming up the road behind you..

it goes past you..

the blues have been on all this time..

the BMW ahead of you (remember it's a V8), can see all the blue lights on the traffic car now...

so puts his foot down.......

You stand down because you know there is NO WAY that you can keep up or catch the BMW now all due to incompetence..

Less than a minute later all you hear on the radio is "TOTAL LOSS, TOTAL LOSS"

Great move. Specially considering that the units trying to get ahead of this pursuit were still a minute away from the area they needed to be at.

I talked with the area car driver on the next shift I worked with him. Let's just say that he was very pissed off.

Caught up in policies

Right, so policies are put together generally speaking for the good of the officers and staff working for Southernshire Constabulary.

So explain to me how does a policy of a police force override the LAWS of the country?

For instance:

•S87 Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. Exemption of fire brigade, ambulance and police vehicles from speed limits

–No statutory provision imposing a speed limit on motor vehicles shall apply to any vehicle on an occasion when it is being used for fire brigade, ambulance or police purposes, if the observance of that provision would be likely to hinder the use of the vehicle for the purpose for which it is being used on that occasion.

SOURCE:

Emergency Vehicles Exceeding the Speed Limit (the source is only for the correct wording of the legislation)

So why does Southernshire Constabulary limit it's police vehicles?

I do understand the limiting of the drivers who have not completed a "high speed" driving course. However, once that is completed satisfactorily then the driver, who having a higher level of training should then be able to make an appropriate decision to drive "according to the conditions and limitations of the road and vehicle", and likewise to be able to exceed the speed limit but also keep within the confines of "being able to stop in the distance that can be seen to be clear".

So that said... when I'm on blues & twos in my "Response" vehicle I've got to watch the speeds that I am travelling at due to the class of vehicle I am travelling in is limited to only exceeding the speed limit by no more than 20 MPH. While the "Area Car" can travel through the very same road at any speed he likes/considers to be safe. Though I've seen some non-safe driving by Area Car drivers as well..

My problem with his though is that in order to properly concentrate on response driving if I am looking at the speedometer all the time then I am not concentrating on the road conditions, the other drivers, the hazards, etc. I am looking constantly to make sure I do not exceed my speeds. Safety first, or policy first?

Go figure.

Next one....... (back before I was a Response driver)

One of our vans had a flat tyre. This got changed somehow (not really sure how) and the spare was left in the back seat area of the transit van between the cage and the rearward facing seat. It rolled around in there for weeks, then it spend a week or two inside the back door of the station in a small town just outside of Anly-Town.

After another short while it ends up back in the van!

I eventually got completely sick of the fact that NO ONE would take the initiative to put the damned wheel back in it's carrier under the back of the van. So I asked about it. I was told that we weren't ALLOWED to put the spare wheel back!

Instead of driving 25 miles to our APPROVED TYRE FITTER I simply took the van to a local tyre shop and asked one of the guys to put the spare back under the van. (Oh the flat had been repaired). After doing this I asked the guy what the damage was. He told me not to worry about it so I reached in to my pocket and took out about £3 and told him to buy a pint on me and thanked him very much before leaving!

Now recently we had an Area Car off the road for a flat tyre. Ok, it's got run-flats on it.. and apparently some sort of problem with having to get some sensor reset when tyres are changed. So I've asked why the Area Car was abandoned 20 miles away from Anly-Town at yet another of our outlying stations.

I was told that it had a flat.

My comment went something along the lines of: "Why don't we have two or three spare wheels at Anly-Town and if we get a flat tyre we can change it?"

Instead I get the reply that again we aren't allowed to change it.

So there you go, a BMW Area Car off the road for 2 day until someone could be arsed to take it again 25 miles away to get the tyre changed at our APPROVED tyre shop.

So why do we have an APPROVED TYRE SHOP which is 25 miles away when there are about 6 tyre shops in Anly-Town, 3 in each of the other 2 large towns on patch and a couple more on the roads in between?

Once again, Go figure........

I'm confused, that's for sure.