Police cars

thepharcyde

thepharcyde

thepharcyde

Soldato
Joined
17 Mar 2004
Posts
8,259
Do they have different levels of authority?

Witnessed the most bizarre dangerous maneuver tonight. Police panda car two cars in front as we approach a queue of traffic. Unusual as this road is never congested as it's a bypass in the boonies.

Dude in a Astra then comes booting past overtaking on crosshatchings while cars are oncoming and basically treats the road like a dual carriageway. Oncoming cars have to drive on the hard shoulder letting this loony drive on their side of the road. So guess what the cop car does, absolutely nothing. :confused:

We get to the cause of the hold up, a Police van with the drivers door wide open with a load of police restraining this guy on the floor thus our side of the road was forced to travel on the other side of the road to get passed. The panda car seeing the commotion then B&2's it to van pulls up behind and helps out.

At no point unless it was radioed must the panda car known what was going on down the road and surely if they knew what was going on would have B&2'ed it to the scene??? So why did this idiot in the Astra not get pulled?
 
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The likelihood of anything happening to the guy in the Astra is probably nil, based on my experience.

For those who know it, I had left the A127 and joined the A128 southbound towards Tilbury. Just as you join the A128 there's a left, right, left turn on a downwards gradient. I was going some pace and a lorry had just begun trundling down, so I started overtaking. Up the hill also going some pace came... two Mitsubishi Evo ANPR cars. I came to within a reasonably near distance of them, and had to get up to 90 to get past in time.

Not a blue light, not a waving hand, nothing in the post. Nada. There was probably not two better equipped vehicles in the entire country to do something than those two right there and then.
 
PMKeates said:
The likelihood of anything happening to the guy in the Astra is probably nil, based on my experience.

For those who know it, I had left the A127 and joined the A128 southbound towards Tilbury. Just as you join the A128 there's a left, right, left turn on a downwards gradient. I was going some pace and a lorry had just begun trundling down, so I started overtaking. Up the hill also going some pace came... two Mitsubishi Evo ANPR cars. I came to within a reasonably near distance of them, and had to get up to 90 to get past in time.

Not a blue light, not a waving hand, nothing in the post. Nada. There was probably not two better equipped vehicles in the entire country to do something than those two right there and then.
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probably overdue a service, it'd been 6 hours since the last and they'd gone into limp home mode
 
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing the other week actually and might have proved it to be true.

I was travelling down the A500 (Stoke) which is a dual carriageway but has a 50mph limit at one section. There was a Police Ford Focus doing 45mph and no one dared to overtake him. I could tell this officer was getting off on his mini power trip as he managed to get both lanes down to 40mph - still no one dared overtake. I bit the bullet and overtook at 50mph and then proceeded to hit an indicated 75mph (70mph on TomTom) when the national speed limit came up.

I'd tracked this officer in my mirrors all the way, and from the moment I'd dared to overtake he'd been glued to my arse, soon as I hit 70 his blue lights were on.

Long story short he claims by his speedo I was certainly doing, roughly about 85mph-ish.... But he couldnt be sure because he might have caught me up slightly, but for sure I was certainly maybe doing roughly over 80ish, he thinks..... I questioned if he'd got any evidence because I knew I wasn't doing 80, or 85mph and I knew exactly how fast I was going. He then said he was willing to let me off speeding through the 50mph and the 85ish (maybe, roughly but for sure) and sent me on my way.

I doubt a local plod even has the powers to dish out a speeding ticket (I may be wrong) This was a crappy Focus with no speed detecting equiptment onboard, just a jumped up young, inexperienced lad on a power trip.
 
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Police officers driving police vehicles have different levels of driving authority, not the vehicles. Police officers have to have had the correct training in order to be exempt from the road traffic act and drive in a different manner to the public. The police officer in the panda most likely was the most basic level of driver, preventing him from being able to take any action against that Astra other than to radio to any other police units in the area who do have a driver of a higher level to advise them of VRM, description, location and direction of travel.
 
Probably to allow for road expansion, or a business park at some point in the future at the bottom. That or the local council had money left over at the end of the fiscal year and fancied a change from chicanes and speedbumps...
 
It's probably going to have stuff on the other exits sooner or later, there's a few like that around here. There's one at Lakeside that's been there for years, it has two exits. It's basically a corner... I don't know if anything's actually going to get built but I assume so. There's a few in Southend as well but they all are in places where it looks like stuff's about to get built.
 
<(Multi)> said:
I was travelling down the A500 (Stoke) which is a dual carriageway but has a 50mph limit at one section. There was a Police Ford Focus doing 45mph and no one dared to overtake him. I could tell this officer was getting off on his mini power trip as he managed to get both lanes down to 40mph - still no one dared overtake. I bit the bullet and overtook at 50mph
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I have bitten the same bullet - A500 Stoke - albeit with an HGV, I too got pulled and after pointing out to him that I had proof that I had not exceeded the limit (I ran a print out from my digital tachograph) he apologised!

:)
 
<(Multi)> said:
I could tell this officer was getting off on his mini power trip as he managed to get both lanes down to 40mph - still no one dared overtake.
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Be fair, he might just have been trundling along.

I came up to Police cars quite often on the A13 going to my old job, and if they were doing 70 by my clock I'd just creep past them at 72/73, they never ever ever said anything and it used to happen all the time.

Just because they're police doesn't mean they constantly want to nick everyone, or are constantly watching everyone with hawk eyes waiting for them to creep 2 miles an hour over the limit. Hasn't it ever occurred to you that sometimes maybe they're just... driving to somewhere?

Personally if I was a copper I'd probably find it funny to see how slow I could get everyone to go on dual carriageways, but I'm infantile.
 
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