Moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle

[Resident]

Yup one of the myths that people seem to be under is that the police etc need to have their lights/sirens on to use their exemptions, iirc in law there are basically no limits, but they have to follow their force/service rules*.
From memory the emergency services get a lot of stick for using their sirens, so usually try to not use them too much and might even turn off the lights if the police are trying to get somewhere quietly in an emergency.

Re the red light, i've seen comments by emergency service people (including the police) saying you don't have any exemption for crossing it to let say an ambulance through, but that if you do get a fine and can show you did so safely the magistrates/people giving the fines can waive it, however that was a few years back.


*The reason most forces have rules in place so that officers need to get permission/inform the control room if they're going to speed (above a certain level?), and why a few years back a police officer doing very high speeds was found not guilty when he claimed he was "training" in his police car whilst on duty, apparently his force didn't have that specific rule in place so he wasn't breaking the law in terms of speeding because as an on duty officer he was exempt, and his employing force hadn't put it in the regs that he needed permission to do it.

Unfortunately abuse by officers is rife in this regard. I have reported 2 such officers just this evening. Travelling at excess speed & 'leap-frogging' each other down the dual carriageway that leads to the operations centre/large police station in my area.

Had that been myself and a mate doing it in our private cars we'd be getting done for dangerous driving.

However despite my complaint I doubt anything will come of it. It's South Yorkshire, kings of the cover-up, second only to the met.

 

[Gaygle]

You do run the small risk of the officer sticking you on for failure to adhere to an traffic instruction which has the same penalty though.

It's so miniscule that it's not even worth talking about. The only time I could see it happening, is if a driver just blindly put their foot down and zoomed through the traffic light without looking and caused a serious accident. Most of the time there is 2 metres of so in front of the traffic light line before you are in a position that you could actually hit a converging car and 99 times out of 100, most drivers just encroach into this 2 metres with their full lock on and create a gap.

It's clearly one of those rules that is in place because you can't just tell people they can drive through red lights even to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle, because they have to cater for the 1% of morons who would think that they could just blow through red lights with the defence that they were getting out of the way of an emergency vehicle.

From memory the emergency services get a lot of stick for using their sirens, so usually try to not use them too much

It's just case dependant. If it's 2am and you're in a built up area, you just tailor your driving to knowing that there maybe people up ahead who may not know you are coming. And at motorway/dual carriageway speeds, having sirens on is pointless. Anything over 90mph and absolutely nobody can hear them.

*The reason most forces have rules in place so that officers need to get permission/inform the control room if they're going to speed (above a certain level?)

Nah, this doesn't happen in any force I know of. You can do almost anything driving wise as long as you can justify it.

a few years back a police officer doing very high speeds was found not guilty when he claimed he was "training" in his police car whilst on duty, apparently his force didn't have that specific rule in place so he wasn't breaking the law in terms of speeding because as an on duty officer he was exempt, and his employing force hadn't put it in the regs that he needed permission to do it.

This was slightly different IIRC (at least, the one i'm thinking of). This was a police driver trainer, who stated he was doing a CPD drive (they are allowed to do this to keep their skills honed). However force policy said though that he needed to inform the chief driving instructor that he was booking himself out to do it and I think there was some question marks over if/how he had done this.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

It might be pedantry, but I've lost count of the amount of arguments I've witnessed where the general attitude of "cyclists don't pay road tax" is used to imply that they therefore have less "right" to use the roads. It's scary the amount of people who seem to think it's quite literally a "road tax", as if paying it should therefore grant you special privilege or access to use of the highway.

In those cases, I think it's justified to point out the difference and reiterate that no such concept exists, because I genuinely think it's a dangerous attitude to have.

Do you also point out that most roads are actually owned/maintained by local authorities rather than national/devolved government so council tax = road tax?

 

[Conscript]

Do you also point out that most roads are actually owned/maintained by local authorities rather than national/devolved government so council tax = road tax?

Well, no, because that would be the exact opposite of the point I'm trying to make...that access to the public highway, or priority while using it is not dependent on any such tax, and neither should it be

 

[yak.h'cir]

Unfortunately abuse by officers is rife in this regard. I have reported 2 such officers just this evening. Travelling at excess speed & 'leap-frogging' each other down the dual carriageway that leads to the operations centre/large police station in my area.

Had that been myself and a mate doing it in our private cars we'd be getting done for dangerous driving.

However despite my complaint I doubt anything will come of it. It's South Yorkshire, kings of the cover-up, second only to the met.

Whilst you may be correct in your assumption it's also quite likely they were just training. The majority of training is done on public roads and if they were just repeating an overtaking manoeuvre on each other at speed this is likely what they were doing.

 

[yak.h'cir]

In answer to original question; I work on a response car for ambulance service, my understanding is is that if a member of the public proceeds through a red light to give way to ourselves you are certainly running the risk of points and fine if a camera picks you up automatically. My practice is is that if I cannot get through i leave lights on but sirens off to try and relieve the pressure. I'd like to think that if you did take the opportunity to defend yourself in court that the penalty would be quashed but I think you'd be at the mercy of the judge on that one and no guarantees as daft as that sounds.

Most of the time we're going to jobs that very clearly aren't going to benefit from the couple of minutes saved on a blue light response (i.e. 40yr male fell 3 weeks ago, back has been aching and GP not doing anything about it, 111 ?ACS), however since it'll be categorised as an emergency response we are mandated to respond on lights to it. (there's basically a no win rule that if it's a CAT 1-3 job then you must respond in an emergency fashion with lights activated (sirens at discretion if at night) however the speed and manor at which you drive is the responsibility the driver. Which is why you might see an ambulance pootling along with lights and sirens on barely claiming any exemptions/normal road speed. However whilst we can choose not to speed, it would really confuse other road users to not proceed through a red light/treat as a give way with lights and sirens on.

The problem comes on the odd occasions when attending a job that sounds like every second will make a difference, i.e. 1yr old choking not breathing... As i'm sure you could imagine we'll make every effort to get there as quickly as possible and may have a more bullying driving style which obviously is not ideal but just the way it is.

 

[Resident]

Whilst you may be correct in your assumption it's also quite likely they were just training. The majority of training is done on public roads and if they were just repeating an overtaking manoeuvre on each other at speed this is likely what they were doing.

Ah The PC Mark Milton defence....

 

[Meridian]

Ah The PC Mark Milton defence....

Depends if they were doing it officially, in which case it's (IIRC) section 24 of the RTA. If it was not official, it depends on whether the force concerned has a policy on what is or is not police duty for the purposes of that section/Act. If they don't, THAT is the mark Milton defence.