Dad pulled out on traffic cop on M6
- Thread starter mattyg
- Start date
Surprised they didn't offer a course. Perhaps COVID related?
I went through a no entry sign a couple years ago that had been erected the day before round the back of the local railway station during redevelopment, got done for driving without due care and attention. My fault, didn't see it that road having been two way for the last 10+years. Naturally there was a couple of coppers stood there waiting for victims. With the cabbies at the Taxi rank finding it hilarious. They busted probably another three people for the same thing while I was giving them details. I got offered a driving awareness course, bloke who instructed said they'd had a few people through for the same place. Still cost me the £100, but no points.
Given Mr Plod was significantly over the speed limit, not lit up and the old mans a professional driver I'd roll the dice with a court visit. It'll gain access to their camera footage.
I went through a no entry sign a couple years ago that had been erected the day before round the back of the local railway station during redevelopment, got done for driving without due care and attention. My fault, didn't see it that road having been two way for the last 10+years. Naturally there was a couple of coppers stood there waiting for victims. With the cabbies at the Taxi rank finding it hilarious. They busted probably another three people for the same thing while I was giving them details. I got offered a driving awareness course, bloke who instructed said they'd had a few people through for the same place. Still cost me the £100, but no points.
Given Mr Plod was significantly over the speed limit, not lit up and the old mans a professional driver I'd roll the dice with a court visit. It'll gain access to their camera footage.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 29 Mar 2003
- Posts
- 57,778
- Location
- Stoke on Trent
You should be able to get the footage with a Subject Access Request
Nope definitely not. Especially if you actually read the op.
I'm not biased because he's my dad. I run a team of 50 Couriers. I see good and bad driving every day. If he messed up he'd have been told. He phoned me wanting to know my view so I have to believe his side of the story. Especially if he wanted my advice on whether to suck it up or fight it.
I think the general consensus is fight it
It'd be great to see the dashcam footage from your father's car (aware we can't see the rear view), it might give us some insight as to the speed of the car in front - i.e. if the car in front slowed to much less than 70mph, thus if the approaching car was actually doing 120mph there's a good chance he could have been a dot in the distance with a closing speed of 60ish mph.
**Easily could have been a good 100m away at point of committing to manoeuvre**
**Easily could have been a good 100m away at point of committing to manoeuvre**
Last edited:
So you say 100% yet you’ve made that decision on how he remembers / chooses to describe it.
most bad driving is done when not paying attention / not realising.
almost worth going to court just to get a look at the footage.
You don't get courses offered at the side of the road anymore, this is done by civilians who make a decision on it and send you a letter a few weeks later. They have to check the national computer systems to see if you've had previous driver education courses within the last 3 years to decide if you are eligible for one.
I think it will be entirely down to the video footage in the OP's dad's car and the police car. As a police driver, whilst you don't have to have your blue lights on to do high speeds, you should be very aware of other motorists that aren't expecting you to be doing 120mph and should be looking out for the body language of other motorists' vehicles to anticipate what they are going to do. But like i said, the devil is well and truly in the detail. It may be the case that your father started manoeuvring, clicked his indicator and then checked his mirror in the classic "manoeuvre-signal-mirror" combo that many people seem to do. Likewise, it might be the case that your dad was showing all the behaviours of a driver who was going to overtake the car in front, which the police driver should have picked up on, and did do his "mirror-signal-manouever" in the correct order in which case it's 6 of 1.
The only issue I have with the latter scenario is that, when you're driving fast, *especially* with no blue lights, it's almost a given that several people are going to pull into your lane to overtake, just due to the sheer fact that they're not expecting you to come up that close. The vast vast majority of these require nothing more than some light/moderate braking, and then to carry on once they pull back in. You don't bear any malice towards them because you know that generally people aren't expecting you to come up that fast, but you acknowledge they probably did check their mirrors and it was clear when they pulled out if you had been doing 70mph and it's just because you're doing 120mph that you caught them a bit quicker than they expected, but still didn't create anything dangerous. For the officer to abandon the job that he was going to, take the time to pull the OP's father over and give him a ticket, suggests to me that this may be something outside of the "norm" and was quite exceptional.
As others have said, it'd be good to see the OP's dads dashcam
I didn't get offered it at the side of the road. Copper filled out the equivalent of the NIP at the side of the road said the worse I'd get is £100 and 3 points. the course got offered by mail about a week later. Same as if you got camera'd. Although it was about 4 years ago...
I think that's why a lot of people are suggesting that the overtake manoeuvre was perhaps a lot closer than what the OPs dad thought it was.
If there was genuinely enough space/time for the OPs dad to pull out then the police would have been trained to react and would have already started braking. That manoeuvre wouldn't likely be enough to warrant a ticket.
One thing everyone has agreed on though, is that the only way to tell for certain the distances would be from the police cars footage.
Soldato
- Joined
- 4 Aug 2007
- Posts
- 22,442
- Location
- Wilds of suffolk
Sounds like wrong place wrong time to me.
Judging distance at night is difficult unless you can maintain vision for a couple of seconds, when looking rearwards and following someone you cant obviously do that.
I tend at night on motorways/A roads to take a glace for initial observation, if clear great if not then look back in front, then look in rear again, maybe do that a couple of times and you should get a good idea from behind of relative speeds.
Whilst slowing if you need to is annoying, that should be the default unless its clear your fine to go. Problem is when following someone who suddenly does something like slow your initial reaction is to glance then overtake.
I had one of them situations start of this year, I have to cross an offset crossroads junction so you turn left for about a car length then right. I pulled up looked right, no traffic so started left and looked ahead to see if I could turn right (nothing much more than crawling at this point). What appeared in front of me was a pair of small lights very close together, very dim, distance would probably be 150 feet or so (you cant see any further in that direction really due to a hill and curve). So I went, then realised what was a pair of lights was 2 Harleys with small rectangular main lights one riding slightly behind but both in the middle of the road with second very close alongside the front rider, just enough to give visibility I assume. I realised as the lights grew large much faster than I expected and suddenly I could hear the noise.
Effect of a car in the distance but not in fact.
Reminded me that you do need a far longer evaluation phase before undertaking maneuvers at night than in the day.
Edit, sorry other thing I was going to mention, you should at night be fairly aware of whats around you on main roads if you are paying full attention. You should be checking your mirrors constantly and hence you should be aware of vehicles starting to appear behind you.
Judging distance at night is difficult unless you can maintain vision for a couple of seconds, when looking rearwards and following someone you cant obviously do that.
I tend at night on motorways/A roads to take a glace for initial observation, if clear great if not then look back in front, then look in rear again, maybe do that a couple of times and you should get a good idea from behind of relative speeds.
Whilst slowing if you need to is annoying, that should be the default unless its clear your fine to go. Problem is when following someone who suddenly does something like slow your initial reaction is to glance then overtake.
I had one of them situations start of this year, I have to cross an offset crossroads junction so you turn left for about a car length then right. I pulled up looked right, no traffic so started left and looked ahead to see if I could turn right (nothing much more than crawling at this point). What appeared in front of me was a pair of small lights very close together, very dim, distance would probably be 150 feet or so (you cant see any further in that direction really due to a hill and curve). So I went, then realised what was a pair of lights was 2 Harleys with small rectangular main lights one riding slightly behind but both in the middle of the road with second very close alongside the front rider, just enough to give visibility I assume. I realised as the lights grew large much faster than I expected and suddenly I could hear the noise.
Effect of a car in the distance but not in fact.
Reminded me that you do need a far longer evaluation phase before undertaking maneuvers at night than in the day.
Edit, sorry other thing I was going to mention, you should at night be fairly aware of whats around you on main roads if you are paying full attention. You should be checking your mirrors constantly and hence you should be aware of vehicles starting to appear behind you.
Reading some of these threads I wonder how many people actually have their mirrors adjusted properly - I can maintain a good awareness of the rear view mirror on my setup even when not looking properly at it and generally catch on if someone is coming up behind at speed before I've actually checked the mirror - though I might be benefiting there from years of video gaming in competitive circumstances where maintaining awareness of more than one set of visual information on the screen at a time is a must.
One of the things I like about my truck though it actually has great all around visibility and much better than many cars I've driven for being able to see what is going on to the sides and behind.
that raises a point, on, how quickly, and, if, op's dad, is seen to try and correct the manouver,
I still think blocking the offside lane (ie the road) whilst you have something of unknown trajectory could be ill advised,
if there was a car preceeding him, too, did he have the visibility.
This thread reminds me of this video, I saw it years back, basically, a copper doing considerable (130 MPH) speed without his blues or sirens on (as he admits they were not) crashes into a clearly indicating lane changing HGV, the HGV driver was deemed in the wrong, which in respect of lane 3 use he certainly was although at the end of that stretch of motorway (M180) is a roundabout where you go left or right and I'd have expected the officer to have known this and perhaps anticipated it...
Due to the angle of the road, its unlikely the HGV driver would have been able to see the oncoming Police car although I still take the officers point the driver should have seen him, BUT,what erks me is the officer clearly thinks 130MPH without blues or twos is perfectly acceptable and is surprised the trucker didn't see him coming at that speed.
I think the OP's Dad is in a similar boat here....
Last edited:
"There was no need", he says. But clearly there was because he stacked it into an HGV that had no chance of seeing him... With the sirens on the HGV driver would have had more chance and would likely have maintained his position until he could see where the sirens were approaching from.
In my mind that can't be blamed on the HGV driver at all.
In my mind that can't be blamed on the HGV driver at all.
Yes that's not a good look for police drivers and their ability to think, feels like he is trying to justify his thought processes post incident for the camera,
looked like he intentionally bloody mindedly binned the car , with whatever chase adrenaline was in his system.
looked like he intentionally bloody mindedly binned the car , with whatever chase adrenaline was in his system.
He was only on the brakes after several flashes of the lorry's indicator when it was already half in his lane. Should have slammed on the anchors as soon as he saw them put the indicators on.
Of course its easy for us to say because we weren't there...
But I would have expected him to be talking about how he ****** up, rather than trying to peg it all on the HGV driver.
Of course its easy for us to say because we weren't there...
But I would have expected him to be talking about how he ****** up, rather than trying to peg it all on the HGV driver.
LOL I see so many drivers who continue without a **** despite being able to clearly hear sirens!
True but he would have at least had a chance haha.