Man arrested for moaning about running police car
Discussion
This is an interesting one - http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/man-arrested...
"A painter says he was arrested and locked up for six hours after complaining about stationary police vehicles left with their engines running near his home.
Jock McFadyen said the cars run “all day and all night” and he, his wife and neighbours have been complaining about the problem for three years."
Is it common practice for police to run their engines while stationary so they avoid having to turn off and reboot their computers? Makes sense to an extent (7 mins is a long time to wait if you have an emergency call to attend), but can't police cars have extra powerful batteries which can run this equipment while cars are stationary.
Feel sorry for the chap who had to spend 6 hours in a cell. Very unfair!
"A painter says he was arrested and locked up for six hours after complaining about stationary police vehicles left with their engines running near his home.
Jock McFadyen said the cars run “all day and all night” and he, his wife and neighbours have been complaining about the problem for three years."
Is it common practice for police to run their engines while stationary so they avoid having to turn off and reboot their computers? Makes sense to an extent (7 mins is a long time to wait if you have an emergency call to attend), but can't police cars have extra powerful batteries which can run this equipment while cars are stationary.
Feel sorry for the chap who had to spend 6 hours in a cell. Very unfair!
La Liga said:
He wasn't arrested for moaning about a police car, he was arrested for hitting one.
This. The guy is clearly a self-righteous prick and should have had f
k kicked out of him in a cell for his troubles. Fortunately our BiB are by and large a much more pleasant bunch of people than this cocksocket.If having them running is the cost of having a police unit attend 7 minutes earlier (or more, with the engine being cold otherwise) then I'd be much happier for that than rapists/murderers/thieves getting away.
It's not like half of London isn't parked up with engines running anyway!
Edited by Randomthoughts on Friday 1st August 09:09
camshafted said:
I couldn't find the ex-plod 330D. There is one, but I couldn't see the references to its police history.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1380834The thread title (currently page 2 of the reader's cars forum) is a bit subtle, I'll grant you.
As for McFadyen and his missus, if they're THAT concerned about the carcinogenic effects of diesel exhaust, may I suggest that their undoubted wealth and career flexibility regarding location might suggest that Beffnal Green isn't necessarily the optimum choice for them?
<looks at Wiki page> "Currently lives in London, Edinburgh and France".
Because, of course, France is renowned for the low percentage of diesel vehicles in use, isn't it?
Out of interest does anyone know what piece of equipment in the Police car takes seven minutes to boot up?
In this era of solid state drives any piece of electronic equipment should be up and running within a minute if not seconds. Surely any tender for emergency equipment should include fast boot up times near the top of list? If something takes seven minutes to boot up then it's clearly not fit for purpose.
In this era of solid state drives any piece of electronic equipment should be up and running within a minute if not seconds. Surely any tender for emergency equipment should include fast boot up times near the top of list? If something takes seven minutes to boot up then it's clearly not fit for purpose.
untakenname said:
Out of interest does anyone know what piece of equipment in the Police car takes seven minutes to boot up?
In this era of solid state drives any piece of electronic equipment should be up and running within a minute if not seconds. Surely any tender for emergency equipment should include fast boot up times near the top of list? If something takes seven minutes to boot up then it's clearly not fit for purpose.
Cos your home laptop is exactly like the Police kit.In this era of solid state drives any piece of electronic equipment should be up and running within a minute if not seconds. Surely any tender for emergency equipment should include fast boot up times near the top of list? If something takes seven minutes to boot up then it's clearly not fit for purpose.
Maybe it does use solid state drives (common sense would dictate this in a moving vehicle). Maybe it has some fairly large database engines to start up. Maybe there's a synchronisation job that has to take place after machine start. Maybe, just maybe it doesn't start Windows 7 and launch Chrome with Facebook set as it's homepage.
Average server boot time in our DC (physical, not virtual) is about 10 minutes.
I was find it strange how people are so quick to jump to the assumption that the person is a 'self-righteous cock socket' who deserves a beating.
He doesn't sound that mental to me, probably a reasonably normal bloke who's been driven up the wall by some stty diesel chugging away outside his window at all hours.
After three years of complaints nothing's been done and he's lost his temper and slapped the bonnet causing 'criminal damage'...course it did.
Also interesting comments at the end about a car running unattended, thought that was illegal.
He doesn't sound that mental to me, probably a reasonably normal bloke who's been driven up the wall by some s
tty diesel chugging away outside his window at all hours. After three years of complaints nothing's been done and he's lost his temper and slapped the bonnet causing 'criminal damage'...course it did.
Also interesting comments at the end about a car running unattended, thought that was illegal.
Edited by budgie smuggler on Friday 1st August 10:04
Fastdruid said:
That's pretty quick, it can take some of the IBM servers that just to pass POST!
£50k of SSD to boot from and I'd hope it was bloody quick!Too much is expected of kit nowadays because of this belief that tablets and phones are demonstrations of what should be possible; it just isn't always the case. Anything that has to be secure for example (like a computer in a police car full of information) will need FDE which is notorious for buggering performance in the same way as having a few elephants as passengers buggers performance.
7 minutes for a police car full of kit to 'start up' seems eminently reasonable, to me. Maybe it's just me (and Fastdruid, by the sound of it!)
turbobloke said:
There has to be a better solution, keeping a computer-GPS system running with the engine off is hardly going to be massively difficult or costly.
turbobloke said:
La Liga said:
I suspect you're right 
There has to be a better solution, keeping a computer-GPS system running with the engine off is hardly going to be massively difficult or costly.
There are, of course, mechanical considerations. How much does it save on wear and tear when a car is being driven very hard from the off when it's warmed up as oppose to from cold? Especially vehicles with turbos and variable value-type stuff where cold, less viscous oil is far from ideal.
Randomthoughts said:
turbobloke said:
There has to be a better solution, keeping a computer-GPS system running with the engine off is hardly going to be massively difficult or costly.
budgie smuggler said:
Also interesting comments at the end about a car running unattended, thought that was illegal.
Reg 107 RVCUR 1986 said:
(1) Save as provided in paragraph (2), no person shall leave, or cause or permit to be left, on a road a motor vehicle which is not attended by a person licensed to drive it unless the engine is stopped and any parking brake with which the vehicle is required to be equipped is effectively set.
(2) The requirement specified in paragraph (1) as to the stopping of the engine shall not apply in respect of a vehicle—
(a) being used for ambulance, fire brigade or police purposes
(2) The requirement specified in paragraph (1) as to the stopping of the engine shall not apply in respect of a vehicle—
(a) being used for ambulance, fire brigade or police purposes
Cat
La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
La Liga said:
I suspect you're right
There has to be a better solution, keeping a computer-GPS system running with the engine off is hardly going to be massively difficult or costly.
There are, of course, mechanical considerations. How much does it save on wear and tear when a car is being driven very hard from the off when it's warmed up as oppose to from cold? Especially vehicles with turbos and variable value-type stuff where cold, less viscous oil is far from ideal.
In terms of 'emergency starts' we're not talking about the first journey of the day are we? A car used for some time and them parked up is more like what happens. Modern oils do a reasonable job under those conditions. If the car was run in properly and uses quality oil then get in and go.
The artist was still being a bit of a pillock in terms of their manner, but given there could be an alternative that doesn't wind up tetchy artists by funneling large anounts of NOx into one locality for tens of minutes at a time, let's hope the Acting Assistant Deputy Super (or whatever her rank was) gets it sorted.
In terms of the amount of time to boot up, I guess that that's an absolute worst-case to boot, communicate and lock the position with the control centre. If there was a news article saying that a Police car had been involved in a serious collision or some other major "scandal", but the Police couldn't do anything about confirming the location/manner in which it was being driven because the computer hadn't had time to lock-on, then there'd be hell to pay, with all sorts of accusations about "How hard is it...?". So they play it safe, by saying "Don't turn the damn thing off."
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
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