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Red Herring · 31-12-16, 01:19 PM

In my brief spell as a Traffic Sgt probably 50% of the calls I took from the public were to complain about the speeds of patrol cars. If they drive at 70mph nobody can overtake so you have a mobile traffic jam (seriously, people actually complained about police cars doing the limit...!) if they were driving at 80+ without blue lights they were clearly "speeding", not trying to make ground on a suspect vehicle ahead without giving themselves away, and if they were driving a 56 in front of a lorry they were being "sneaky" and nearly caused an accident when the caller had to brake sharply to avoid going past at 90... (I kid you not!)

Police cars regularly exceed the speed limit for a variety of reasons, and yes, some of the time it's just because they can! Bearing in mind that in this day and age pretty much every marked car is fitted with a little black box that records everything you might need to know the abuse is considerably less prevalent than when I was a young officer (we used to consider it unofficial practice, which principals aside was actually quite a valid point) so lets not jump to conclusions.

The car rushing back to the station may have a violent prisoner on board, or may be responding to a call for assistance at the station? Regularly goes past on blues and twos you say? Have you considered it might be a training car and they run regular courses, so the session of blue light responding always falls at 3pm Tuesdays and Thursdays?

Keep an open mind, you're pretty quick to slag off the police if they don't.......

31-12-16, 01:19 PM	#27
Red Herring Member Mega Poster Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 2,708	Re: Thanks To Police Patrol: In my brief spell as a Traffic Sgt probably 50% of the calls I took from the public were to complain about the speeds of patrol cars. If they drive at 70mph nobody can overtake so you have a mobile traffic jam (seriously, people actually complained about police cars doing the limit...!) if they were driving at 80+ without blue lights they were clearly "speeding", not trying to make ground on a suspect vehicle ahead without giving themselves away, and if they were driving a 56 in front of a lorry they were being "sneaky" and nearly caused an accident when the caller had to brake sharply to avoid going past at 90... (I kid you not!) Police cars regularly exceed the speed limit for a variety of reasons, and yes, some of the time it's just because they can! Bearing in mind that in this day and age pretty much every marked car is fitted with a little black box that records everything you might need to know the abuse is considerably less prevalent than when I was a young officer (we used to consider it unofficial practice, which principals aside was actually quite a valid point) so lets not jump to conclusions. The car rushing back to the station may have a violent prisoner on board, or may be responding to a call for assistance at the station? Regularly goes past on blues and twos you say? Have you considered it might be a training car and they run regular courses, so the session of blue light responding always falls at 3pm Tuesdays and Thursdays? Keep an open mind, you're pretty quick to slag off the police if they don't.......