Well that is good news, surely. Well actually, no, it isn't. Aside from the fact the driving at 113mph obviously IS pretty dangerous, the official ruling only applies to police officers (police officers who were not responding to an emergency of course).
To clarify my stance here, of course trained emergency services drivers should be permitted to exceed the arbitrary speed limits when responding to an emergency, if it's safe to do so.
This plod had been doing 120mph to get to an emergency. Fine, if it was my emergency, I'd want him to do exactly that.
He was then told over the radio that the emergency had been cancelled, but he continued to bomb along before totalling his Beemer.
The reason he kept going for so long at high speed in a non emergency situation? Was it;
a) He loved it and thought he could get away with it as he is a copper?
b) He was racing a Vaxhuall Corsa with a bodykit?
c) He needed to find somewhere safe to switch his blue lights off?
d) He thought better than his controller and wanted to get to the incident himself?
I am really having trouble understanding the answer to this, not only how a serving officer can bring himself to say such utter tripe, how even a defence solicitor can pretend to believe it, and how a judge can accept it!
The answer is lucky c).
During his trial he claimed his speed was appropriate for the weather conditions, and that he was trying to find a safe place to turn off his blue lights after being stood down from the emergency call.
Police drivers, how difficult is it to turn the fecking lights off?
If I am driving along the motorway and my boot flies open, is it acceptable for me to accelerate up to 113mph to find a safe place to stop?
Then there's the small matter of a judge overruling a jury, but that's a different story.......
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Even if I were prepared to accept that it wasn't safe to switch off his blue lights (which I'm not, because I doubt he stopped when he switched them ON, and they are simple controls), what I don't understand is why he had to travel at 113mph to get to a safe place. Why not simply bring the speed down to 70mph, and attend to it at the next police pull-in?
ReplyDeleteI should point out though that the officer wasn't cleared - or at least not on my reading of the situation - the offence was brought down to careless driving.
I still think it should have been dangerous driving myself.