Jonto

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/l...re/3679954.stm

scrappydoo

Hope they are being charged with due care or dangerous driving..

Dracoro

Here we go. The anti police mob have started Looking at that news story, no-one knows what happened or what caused the crash yet the daggers will come out saying they should be done for x y or z. Crash could have been caused by a blow out or a car fault etc. you don't know so you can't castrate them until you know the facts. If it turns out they were driving dangerously THEN you can hope they get done.

NotoriousREV

Not anti-police BUT if the crash was caused by a blow out, they were obviously driving in such a way as not to be able to avoid the incident i.e. too close. I'm sure they'd have no hesitation in prosecuting a civilian driver in such circumstances.

Dracoro

Have you seen what happens when there's a blow out? The car can go everywhere. If one was overtaking the other, the car could swerve into that lane and crash into them. The only way round that is to drive well back (which many should anyway) and NEVER overtake as you'll be too close to another car should something go wrong. Anyway, I'll await the fact about what really happened before passing judgement.

NotoriousREV

2 cars I could beleive, but 4?

Tiggs

so police are practacing something that may help us in the future (they are not at work for fun) and we want them charged without knowing what happened?

there are some idiots on here.

of course, if it was someone doing 150 in a classic that got off because of a technicality on the NIP we could shout and cheer no doubt.

NotoriousREV

I want them charged IF they were doing something wrong. What the hell could they have been practising that involves wrecking 4 cars and closing an entire motorway, a demolition derby? What if a civilian was involved in the incident through no fault of their own? If it's such a dangerous thing they were practising, it's either too risky to use on public roads, or they need more practice before trying it on public roads!

At the end of the day, they crashed because someone or something did something wrong. The same can happen to an ordinary driver (misjudge anothers speed, blowout etc etc). If YOU crashed as a result, you WOULD be prosecuted where appropriate and the same should apply to the police.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

I just hope they're all OK

I'm sure appropriate action will be taken by those in charge.

jasey

4 Cars - Hope they were practising the "Box in the theiving scum" routine - anything else and they might well be in trouble.

Wait-n-See.

BuRR

They were probably practising a TPAC excercise which involves the vehicles driving extremely close to each other on the motorway.

It works by the three police cars slowing the three lanes of the motorway down to about 20mph, which in turn creates a large sterile area in front of them.

The cars then accelerate after a stolen car (or target car) along a nice empty motorway.

Techniques (which I won't go into here) are used - which is probably how the cars got a bit close and touched. Don't you think its strange how 4 police cars and no civilian cars were involved?

If they don't train to deal with these matters, how do you expect them to catch the idiots that break into your houses and steal the cars?

MooseRacer

^^

jasey

I prefer my name for it

NotoriousREV

TPAC = Trap pikeys, arrest *****

DJ140

I was part of one of these training excercises yesterday and it would be very difficult to not crash into the civilian car in front, if he had to brake.

It was around 8pm, on the M1, I was travelling at 75-80Mph. Car comes up behind, me in the middle lane, overtaking I might add. Car gets closer and closer, so close I can't see his headlights and no intention of overtaking By the way he's driving, I suspect it's a copper and sure enough after around 60 seconds of him trying to make me speed up and driving like a complete ****, he overtakes and speeds off.

Training excercise over, I wonder if I passed!!!

The reason that the general public have no respect for traffic cops is that the vast majority drive like tw*ts and act like children.

Dracoro

BULLSH*T! How do you back this up? By a few pub talk stories? the MAJORITY DO drive very well, it's the minority that don't. I've rarely seen a police driver drive poorly. The thing is, people never write on the bbs or speak in the pub about the way the plod on the motorway did some great driving (most the time you won't notice anyway).

Those that do act like children and drive like tw*ts won't get very far anyway.

Tiggs

at what point do you confirm this was a cop?

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

TPAC was probably being used as an exercise, as Burr has said thats why 4 police cars were involved and no civilian cars were damaged, give these guys a break, If my Scoob was stolen I'd hope they would use this type of entrapment to catch the thiving scum, DJ140, If such a car was coming up behind you so fast why o why did you not pull in to the inside lane and let him past.
Cheers
Colin

vindaloo

Last line of the BBC's report made me laugh. "did not involve new vehicles". OK, so that's fine then. We haven't lost too much in the pile-up.

J.

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

hedgehog

I recently watched a news report relating to a fatal accident where a police officer was put up for interview and his contribution was that the accident was still under investigation but he believed that the accident was caused by speeding. The motorists involved were declared guilty and their crime was already determined by a police officer speaking on the media live from the scene and before the results of any scientific investigation was known. As I am sure others will have noticed this is not an uncommon tactic at accident scenes and what I saw is almost the expected format of normal police reaction.

Clearly if these highly trained police officers can leap to these conclusions about the driving of members of the public then it is only reasonable that us ignornant members of the public should do the same thing in relation to police driving. So I want to make it known in this public forum that although no one yet knows what happened it was almost certainly a case of police officers driving extremely badly and at hugely excessive speeds and behaving like children who have been let out in a car with a flashing light on top so they can pretend to be the macho man in the big picture. It may not be true in any respect but by the time the accident report comes out all anyone will remember about the crash was that it was the one caused by bad police driving, no one will ever read or publish the report so the fact that bad police driving caused it will become a "fact." That is how the police colour our actions using the media so they can't complain when we do the same for them.

I have seen some of the most appalling driving by police officers often, as others have pointed out, in an attempt to provoke a reaction from an innocent driver going about his or her own business. If the officer in the marked police car who drove up my *** for about a mile on an otherwise almost empty A9 just south of Inverness on Saturday (until I pulled over and stopped for a while to get him out of my hair) is on the list then he may want to consider the potential results of his actions.

Interestingly when the actual results of the accident investigation relating to the accident I mentioned above were released it turned out that the accident was actually caused by some nutter overtaking in a right turning "filter" lane and running into the back of a stationary vehicle. So, the accident was caused by bad driving and one of the "speeding" vehicles had actually been stationary at the time.

While there is no question that the police have a difficult job to do attempting to entrap innocent motorists and lying about the cause of accidents so they can get more cameras and more income from speeding tickets does no one any favours. It is a trivial matter to establish, from postings to this forum, that confidence in the police is falling like a stone and most people, quite frankly, wouldn't trust a police officer to sit the right way around on a toilet. We have to hope that we can turn this situation around but the way things are going I suspect that the police are being used as a political football caught between "human rights" which prevent them doing their job and the political need to be seen to have better and better clear up rates. You can't catch criminals if you are not allowed to catch then and so, instead, you persecute law abiding citizens with an investment in society, such as motorists.

As an aside I think it very interesting how keen they are for us to know that the incident didn't involved any "new vehicles." I've no idea why that gets a mention but I'd guess that if you knew that then you'd know what the really story is here.

Pigfrog

Police driver training is apparently very difficult. Considering there must be thousands of them that have gone through it most must be pretty good as this is the first accident of this kind I have ever heard of. Sometimes accidents happen.

hedgehog

The police would assert that there is no such thing as an "accident" as all such events have causes and the cause must be investigated and someone held accountable. In light of that this makes interesting reading:

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ne...s_his_job.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/677067.stm

Police accidents are not uncommon, think of the number of miles police vehicles drive per day etc.

It is also the case that the other emergency services have a much lower "accident" rate than the police but, clearly, on occasions the nature of their driving may be very different.

A small minority of police officers are trained to a very high standard in terms of driving but the vast majority have little training beyond that given to you or i.

There was also some considerable concern a few years back about the number of accidents that were occurring while police drivers were being trained, this was brought to a head by a few high profile fatalities of members of the public. I am not aware of any similar problems with the other emergency services who also have a need to train drivers.

It is hard not to conclude, therefore, that there may be an attitude problem with some police drivers and that, perhaps, it is this "drive as fast as i like with a flashing light" attitude that leads them to apply for the job in the first place. On the other hand such people may be just the people required to actually catch criminals in cars, other drivers may be more careful and less successful.

Either way it is a difficult balance and while the same laws should apply to "them" as well as "us" it is easy to see that we are usually considered guilty even before the investigation starts.

DJ140

No, they only get as far as the traffic division and spend 95% of their time catching speeding motorists. Bollocks to speed, what about the ******* that drive 200 miles in the middle lane, 2 feet from the car in front.

These are the idiots causing the accidents and the police don't give a sh*t about them - Presume it means more paperwork and a court appearance, which means less money in the coffers.

DJ140

As I spend a lot of time on the motorway, it is easy to spot the cops. They are the ones that you can see approaching at high speed, in the rear view mirror, then slow down to your speed, very close to your bumper and try and goad you into driving faster. In answer to your question, when he was about 800 yards away and closing fast - 100+ in a marked car.

The other way to spot them is that they actually use the inside line, like all Impreza drivers! If I see anyone using the truck only lane, I usually slow down to see if it's an unmarked car, just in case.