A police car and a screamin' siren...
Discussion
...Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete.
Emergency response driving
Firstly, an apology. This is a looong post. I tried to edit it down, but it's an involved subject and I didn't want to miss anything, so put the kettle on and put your feet up.
“Emergency response” driving is the type of driving employed by the emergency services when they are required to attend an emergency incident. For the police, calls to the control room are graded by the operator into several different levels of response, and those graded as “grade 1” or “code 1” will receive an emergency response.
A grade 1 police response will be given to incidents which involve (or potentially involve) a threat to life, the use of violence, serious injury or serious damage to property. An emergency response will also be given to incidents where a (serious) crime is in progress, an offender has been recently disturbed or detained and for road traffic accidents where an injury has occurred or where the road is blocked.
Incident grading in the ambulance service is decided in each individual case, based on the immediate needs of the patients. It’s one of the reasons that the operator asks a series of very detailed questions about the patient and their condition. As an aside, I’ve had cause to call an ambulance twice in the last year or so, and ambulance control room operators are some of the most professional people I’ve ever dealt with in an emergency situation
The Fire Service are a little more old fashioned and tend to treat most calls as requiring an emergency response until they have arrived and assessed the incident.
Legal Exemptions
I’m not going to go into too much detail on legal exemptions, other than to say that police, fire and ambulance drivers (together with a small number of military, rescue and clandestine service drivers) are exempt from certain road traffic regulations, such as speed limits, red traffic lights, keep left/right signs and a few others.
There is a nice PH Wiki on the subject here if you want to know more;
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
One thing I will mention in relation to exemptions is the fact that these are absolute exemptions from specific regulations. In other words, they are not conditional on blue lights and sirens being used. Surveillance driving, for example, would be impossible if the surveillance officers were required to use blue lights to claim an exemption.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there is no exemption from careless or dangerous driving offences, so emergency drivers should remember that, despite their exemptions, they are still responsible for their actions should the wheel come off.
And a note on accidents. One key phrase in police driver training is “Drive to arrive”. The ultimate aim isn’t to get to an incident as quickly as possible – it’s simply to get to the incident. If you crash on your way to the incident, you’re out of the game, someone else will have to attend the incident, and someone else will have to come and deal with your accident. Getting it wrong can, very quickly, tie up a whole shift of officers unecessarily.
Before I go any further, I’ll add that the driving skills I’ll be writing about relate solely to emergency response, and not pursuits, which require a completely different set of skills and a higher level of driver training.
These days, all standard level police drivers receive several days of emergency response instruction towards the end of their driving course. This was not always the case. Until around the early 2000s, (in my force at least) standard and advanced students received no emergency response instruction whatsoever. They would be taught how to drive systematically to a good standard, but the response driving was just something they had to work out for themselves.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t ideal, and in the early years of my police career I was the passenger with numerous drivers who had – shall we say questionable skills - in making dynamic risk assessment.
Loonies, in other words.
Honestly – in the 1990’s, there were some absolutely certifiable mentalists out there disguised as police officers. I try not to think about how many close calls, scrapes and “close your eyes and prey” moments I endured from the passenger seat. If I’m being honest, I was probably guilty of some lunacy myself in those early days, but I survived intact and subsequently saw the light.
The Equipment
The first panda car I drove was a 1986 two-door Rover Metro with a 1275 A series engine and a 4 speed gearbox. The only emergency equipment fitted was a single blue beacon, about the size and shape of an upturned plant pot on the roof and illuminated “police” signs on the front and rear. No battenberg livery, no alternate flashing headlights, no rear flashing red lights, no light bar, no strobes and no sirens. It didn’t even have an orange stripe along the sides.
These days, emergency vehicles are designed to be as visible and identifiable as possible, because above everything else, if you’re driving to an emergency, the sooner other drivers see you, the longer they have to react, and as you’ll see later, it’s the reactions of other drivers that we’re looking for.
A fairly standard emergency set-up these days is a flashing blue roof bar, alternate-flashing headlights and a whoop/wail siren. The blue lights can be operated with or without the flashing headlights, which you would usually want to leave off on unlit roads at night to avoid dazzling. The sirens are usually operated by the horn switch. When the blue lights are off, it just operates the horn as normal. When the blues are switched on, the first press of the horn will activate the “whooper” siren (the slower of the two sirens), the second press of the horn will switch to the “wailer” and the third press will switch the sirens off. We’ll look at the advantages of switching from whoop to wail in a bit.
There are other combinations, depending on the service or area. There are numerous different types of flashing lights, strobes and sirens continually being developed – squawks, white noise etc, but for this post I’ll stick with the standard set-up described above.
Protection
So, how much protection does the emergency equipment give you?
Some emergency drivers seem to think that the blue lights and sirens create an invisible protective force-field around their vehicle which will defend them from all possible threats.
They don't.
All the emergency equipment does is make you more visible. That’s it. It does not mean that people will actually see you – it just means that they are more likely to see you. It does not give you any protection and it does not guarantee that you’ll get the reactions you’re looking for – or any reaction whatsoever – from other road users.
On to the actual driving
Believe it or not, emergency response driving, if performed correctly, can actually be quite a relaxing way to drive. This might sound implausible, considering the possible nature of the incident the driver is attending, but if you’re able to separate that element out – compartmentalise it – and think only about the driving, it can, genuinely, be a relaxing way to drive.
Think about it – you don’t have to sit in stationary traffic, you don’t have to be held up by traffic lights or other junctions, you’re not restricted by speed limits and almost every other road user will do their best to get out of your way and allow you precedence. If you can keep your concentration levels high and you employ good observation and planning, it’s relatively easy, with a little experience, to stay quite relaxed on an emergency run.
Lets start with a single carriageway with traffic moving in both directions. You’re looking for reactions from other road users which indicate that they have seen you and that they are giving you precedence. The traffic coming towards you is more likely to see you before the traffic travelling in your direction. You should position your vehicle in such a way as to make yourself as visible as possible and also in such a way as to indicate your intentions to others.
The key theme is to hold back, position yourself appropriately and wait for a reaction. Oncoming vehicles will move to their left to give you more room. Vehicles ahead will move to the left, sometimes with an indicator confirming that they’re pulling over. The emergency driver should hold back, position to the offside – often straddling the white line – and wait for these reactions before passing and continuing.
There are some common bad reactions from other drivers which often catch out the novice, but can be predicted with a little experience. For example, if you’re following two vehicles, it’s quite common for the front vehicle to see you and react by pulling over to the nearside and slowing, only for the rear vehicles – the one which really should have seen you, to pull out and pass the front vehicle, oblivious to your existence, just as you are about to pass them yourself.
Drivers will often pull up adjacent to traffic islands and bollards, leaving you little or nor room to pass. Be patient, either move to the offside of the bollard or sit and wait for them to wake up, which they usually do after a couple of seconds.
One bad reaction I’ve never understood comes from drivers sitting in junctions ahead. They’re waiting to join your road, looking in your direction and they’ve definitely seen you approaching. Instead of waiting for you to pass, they will pull out and then immediately move over to the left to let you pass. Why not just wait? I’ve never been able to work that one out.
They key with all these situations is that the driver should hold back, keep a safe distance, and wait until it’s safe to pass. Sounds familiar? Does it sound a bit like Roadcraft system? Stay on the brakes until it’s safe to go, come off the brakes, take the appropriate gear and then accelerate. For many new police drivers, the emergency response training is the point in their driving course when system really “clicks” and they finally get the point of separating their actions into the five phases.
Traffic light junctions can be particularly hazardous. Emergency drivers should treat red traffic lights as a “give way” junction, so flying through red lights with a quick glance on approach is very bad practice. Instead, drivers should approach cautiously, at a speed which should allow them to stop if someone pulls across the junction.
If there is a build up of traffic on the approach to a junction, there are generally two choices. An offside approach usually offers the least resistance, but can be risky, particularly at a poorly sighted junction. The other approach is to position yourself straddling the lanes, with lights and sirens switched on, and wait for the “parting of the waves”. Once the other drivers have clocked you and realised your intentions, they will generally move to their left and right, and create an extra lane to allow you through.
There are times, however, when there simply isn’t room for people to move, and it is occasionally good practice to switch off the sirens, leave your blue lights on, and just wait for the lights to change. When they do, switch your siren back on, and once the traffic is moving again, people will be able to give you room to pass.
When driving in urban areas, the high buildings and proximity of walls can make it difficult for others to work out what direction your sirens are coming from. This can be where the switch from whoop to wail (and back again) can help. Often the change in note or frequency of a siren helps people to recognise the direction it’s coming from.
There is another problem in the cities – what I term “siren apathy”. Sirens are so common in busy cities that people have started to either not notice them, or to actually ignore them. It’s the reason that the motorcyclists in the Met’s Special Escort Group don’t use sirens, but instead use very loud whistles.
Whilst we’re in the city, be very very cautious of pedestrians. They may be sensible and alert to your movements. On the other hand, they may be deaf, or blind, or both, or drunk, or high, or listening to headphones or even mentally deranged. It’s almost impossible to tell in the short time you’ve got to make an assessment, but look for reactions – people looking towards you or putting their hands over their ears. The ones to be really careful of are the people who don’t react. They are the ones who are most likely to be unaware of your presence, and who may suddenly decide to cross the road…
On the motorway, at higher speeds, sirens tend to be fairly ineffective. The cars in front are travelling away from you at speed, so are very unlikely to hear a siren on a vehicle approaching from the rear. Position in the offside lane and wait for vehicles to move to their left. Keep a good following position and be ready for bad reactions – sudden braking to a stop in lane 3 is not unheard of and it’s occasionally necessary to pass drivers on the nearside.
In stationary motorway traffic the hard shoulder is your best option, but keep your speed down. Some drivers may react badly to your lights and move to the hard shoulder, so you need to be ready to stop. There is also a lot of debris on the hard shoulder, so you need to mitigate the risk of puncture by keeping your speed down. Also, don’t forget what the hard shoulder is for – you may encounter stationary vehicles.
There are other risks associated with travelling in convoy with other emergency vehicles. Drivers usually see the first vehicle, move over, allow it to pass, and then fail to realise there is more than one vehicle. There are two approaches in these situations. The first is to close right up and keep a minimum distance between vehicles, effectively travelling as one large vehicle. This doesn’t allow time for drivers to pull out in front of the second vehicle, but it does have associated risks and the second driver is very reliant on the decisions of the first driver, which isn’t ideal.
The second approach is to increase the distance between emergency vehicles to a few hundred yards. This allows people to see and react to the second vehicle in plenty of time and is a safer option in my opinion.
And finally, some thoughts on the mental aspects.
There are two elements of emergency response driving which are entirely dependent on the driver's own mental state. They are red mist and noble cause risk taking.
We're all familiar with red mist - it's the situation when a drivers emotions take over and their ability to make realistic dynamic risk assessments is seriously hampered by the amount of adrenaline being produced by their body. The adrenaline puts their body in "fight or flight" mode, which is a throwback to our animal days where the body is quickly prepared for running away or fighting by the affects of adrenaline - raised heart rate and blood pressure, and - worryingly for drivers - a tunnelling of their vision and reduction in awareness of their hearing. Fine motor skills become much more difficult and it dramatically changes a driver's thinking process.
Red mist shifts a driver's thinking on to the target or goal - the incident they are attending - rather than thinking about the job at hand - the driving.
The second element I mentioned - noble cause risk taking - allows drivers to justify their poor decisions by claiming that they are necessary because someone's life is at risk, or there is some other "noble cause" to justify their risky behaviour. Even for a driver who is fully in control of their emotions, noble cause risk taking can creep into their driving and create very real dangers.
Good quality driver training can help - if you're affected by red mist, for instance, a good grounding in systematic driving can at least give you a good "baseline" standard of driving to fall back on when the adrenaline is flowing.
But, ultimately, it's down to to individual drivers and their ability to recognise when these issues are arising, and having the ability to overcome them and keep their attention fully on the driving.
Anyway, that’s more than enough for now. If you’re an emergency response driver, feel free to share your experiences.
Emergency response driving
Firstly, an apology. This is a looong post. I tried to edit it down, but it's an involved subject and I didn't want to miss anything, so put the kettle on and put your feet up.
“Emergency response” driving is the type of driving employed by the emergency services when they are required to attend an emergency incident. For the police, calls to the control room are graded by the operator into several different levels of response, and those graded as “grade 1” or “code 1” will receive an emergency response.
A grade 1 police response will be given to incidents which involve (or potentially involve) a threat to life, the use of violence, serious injury or serious damage to property. An emergency response will also be given to incidents where a (serious) crime is in progress, an offender has been recently disturbed or detained and for road traffic accidents where an injury has occurred or where the road is blocked.
Incident grading in the ambulance service is decided in each individual case, based on the immediate needs of the patients. It’s one of the reasons that the operator asks a series of very detailed questions about the patient and their condition. As an aside, I’ve had cause to call an ambulance twice in the last year or so, and ambulance control room operators are some of the most professional people I’ve ever dealt with in an emergency situation
The Fire Service are a little more old fashioned and tend to treat most calls as requiring an emergency response until they have arrived and assessed the incident.
Legal Exemptions
I’m not going to go into too much detail on legal exemptions, other than to say that police, fire and ambulance drivers (together with a small number of military, rescue and clandestine service drivers) are exempt from certain road traffic regulations, such as speed limits, red traffic lights, keep left/right signs and a few others.
There is a nice PH Wiki on the subject here if you want to know more;
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
One thing I will mention in relation to exemptions is the fact that these are absolute exemptions from specific regulations. In other words, they are not conditional on blue lights and sirens being used. Surveillance driving, for example, would be impossible if the surveillance officers were required to use blue lights to claim an exemption.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there is no exemption from careless or dangerous driving offences, so emergency drivers should remember that, despite their exemptions, they are still responsible for their actions should the wheel come off.
And a note on accidents. One key phrase in police driver training is “Drive to arrive”. The ultimate aim isn’t to get to an incident as quickly as possible – it’s simply to get to the incident. If you crash on your way to the incident, you’re out of the game, someone else will have to attend the incident, and someone else will have to come and deal with your accident. Getting it wrong can, very quickly, tie up a whole shift of officers unecessarily.
Before I go any further, I’ll add that the driving skills I’ll be writing about relate solely to emergency response, and not pursuits, which require a completely different set of skills and a higher level of driver training.
These days, all standard level police drivers receive several days of emergency response instruction towards the end of their driving course. This was not always the case. Until around the early 2000s, (in my force at least) standard and advanced students received no emergency response instruction whatsoever. They would be taught how to drive systematically to a good standard, but the response driving was just something they had to work out for themselves.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t ideal, and in the early years of my police career I was the passenger with numerous drivers who had – shall we say questionable skills - in making dynamic risk assessment.
Loonies, in other words.
Honestly – in the 1990’s, there were some absolutely certifiable mentalists out there disguised as police officers. I try not to think about how many close calls, scrapes and “close your eyes and prey” moments I endured from the passenger seat. If I’m being honest, I was probably guilty of some lunacy myself in those early days, but I survived intact and subsequently saw the light.
The Equipment
The first panda car I drove was a 1986 two-door Rover Metro with a 1275 A series engine and a 4 speed gearbox. The only emergency equipment fitted was a single blue beacon, about the size and shape of an upturned plant pot on the roof and illuminated “police” signs on the front and rear. No battenberg livery, no alternate flashing headlights, no rear flashing red lights, no light bar, no strobes and no sirens. It didn’t even have an orange stripe along the sides.
These days, emergency vehicles are designed to be as visible and identifiable as possible, because above everything else, if you’re driving to an emergency, the sooner other drivers see you, the longer they have to react, and as you’ll see later, it’s the reactions of other drivers that we’re looking for.
A fairly standard emergency set-up these days is a flashing blue roof bar, alternate-flashing headlights and a whoop/wail siren. The blue lights can be operated with or without the flashing headlights, which you would usually want to leave off on unlit roads at night to avoid dazzling. The sirens are usually operated by the horn switch. When the blue lights are off, it just operates the horn as normal. When the blues are switched on, the first press of the horn will activate the “whooper” siren (the slower of the two sirens), the second press of the horn will switch to the “wailer” and the third press will switch the sirens off. We’ll look at the advantages of switching from whoop to wail in a bit.
There are other combinations, depending on the service or area. There are numerous different types of flashing lights, strobes and sirens continually being developed – squawks, white noise etc, but for this post I’ll stick with the standard set-up described above.
Protection
So, how much protection does the emergency equipment give you?
Some emergency drivers seem to think that the blue lights and sirens create an invisible protective force-field around their vehicle which will defend them from all possible threats.
They don't.
All the emergency equipment does is make you more visible. That’s it. It does not mean that people will actually see you – it just means that they are more likely to see you. It does not give you any protection and it does not guarantee that you’ll get the reactions you’re looking for – or any reaction whatsoever – from other road users.
On to the actual driving
Believe it or not, emergency response driving, if performed correctly, can actually be quite a relaxing way to drive. This might sound implausible, considering the possible nature of the incident the driver is attending, but if you’re able to separate that element out – compartmentalise it – and think only about the driving, it can, genuinely, be a relaxing way to drive.
Think about it – you don’t have to sit in stationary traffic, you don’t have to be held up by traffic lights or other junctions, you’re not restricted by speed limits and almost every other road user will do their best to get out of your way and allow you precedence. If you can keep your concentration levels high and you employ good observation and planning, it’s relatively easy, with a little experience, to stay quite relaxed on an emergency run.
Lets start with a single carriageway with traffic moving in both directions. You’re looking for reactions from other road users which indicate that they have seen you and that they are giving you precedence. The traffic coming towards you is more likely to see you before the traffic travelling in your direction. You should position your vehicle in such a way as to make yourself as visible as possible and also in such a way as to indicate your intentions to others.
The key theme is to hold back, position yourself appropriately and wait for a reaction. Oncoming vehicles will move to their left to give you more room. Vehicles ahead will move to the left, sometimes with an indicator confirming that they’re pulling over. The emergency driver should hold back, position to the offside – often straddling the white line – and wait for these reactions before passing and continuing.
There are some common bad reactions from other drivers which often catch out the novice, but can be predicted with a little experience. For example, if you’re following two vehicles, it’s quite common for the front vehicle to see you and react by pulling over to the nearside and slowing, only for the rear vehicles – the one which really should have seen you, to pull out and pass the front vehicle, oblivious to your existence, just as you are about to pass them yourself.
Drivers will often pull up adjacent to traffic islands and bollards, leaving you little or nor room to pass. Be patient, either move to the offside of the bollard or sit and wait for them to wake up, which they usually do after a couple of seconds.
One bad reaction I’ve never understood comes from drivers sitting in junctions ahead. They’re waiting to join your road, looking in your direction and they’ve definitely seen you approaching. Instead of waiting for you to pass, they will pull out and then immediately move over to the left to let you pass. Why not just wait? I’ve never been able to work that one out.
They key with all these situations is that the driver should hold back, keep a safe distance, and wait until it’s safe to pass. Sounds familiar? Does it sound a bit like Roadcraft system? Stay on the brakes until it’s safe to go, come off the brakes, take the appropriate gear and then accelerate. For many new police drivers, the emergency response training is the point in their driving course when system really “clicks” and they finally get the point of separating their actions into the five phases.
Traffic light junctions can be particularly hazardous. Emergency drivers should treat red traffic lights as a “give way” junction, so flying through red lights with a quick glance on approach is very bad practice. Instead, drivers should approach cautiously, at a speed which should allow them to stop if someone pulls across the junction.
If there is a build up of traffic on the approach to a junction, there are generally two choices. An offside approach usually offers the least resistance, but can be risky, particularly at a poorly sighted junction. The other approach is to position yourself straddling the lanes, with lights and sirens switched on, and wait for the “parting of the waves”. Once the other drivers have clocked you and realised your intentions, they will generally move to their left and right, and create an extra lane to allow you through.
There are times, however, when there simply isn’t room for people to move, and it is occasionally good practice to switch off the sirens, leave your blue lights on, and just wait for the lights to change. When they do, switch your siren back on, and once the traffic is moving again, people will be able to give you room to pass.
When driving in urban areas, the high buildings and proximity of walls can make it difficult for others to work out what direction your sirens are coming from. This can be where the switch from whoop to wail (and back again) can help. Often the change in note or frequency of a siren helps people to recognise the direction it’s coming from.
There is another problem in the cities – what I term “siren apathy”. Sirens are so common in busy cities that people have started to either not notice them, or to actually ignore them. It’s the reason that the motorcyclists in the Met’s Special Escort Group don’t use sirens, but instead use very loud whistles.
Whilst we’re in the city, be very very cautious of pedestrians. They may be sensible and alert to your movements. On the other hand, they may be deaf, or blind, or both, or drunk, or high, or listening to headphones or even mentally deranged. It’s almost impossible to tell in the short time you’ve got to make an assessment, but look for reactions – people looking towards you or putting their hands over their ears. The ones to be really careful of are the people who don’t react. They are the ones who are most likely to be unaware of your presence, and who may suddenly decide to cross the road…
On the motorway, at higher speeds, sirens tend to be fairly ineffective. The cars in front are travelling away from you at speed, so are very unlikely to hear a siren on a vehicle approaching from the rear. Position in the offside lane and wait for vehicles to move to their left. Keep a good following position and be ready for bad reactions – sudden braking to a stop in lane 3 is not unheard of and it’s occasionally necessary to pass drivers on the nearside.
In stationary motorway traffic the hard shoulder is your best option, but keep your speed down. Some drivers may react badly to your lights and move to the hard shoulder, so you need to be ready to stop. There is also a lot of debris on the hard shoulder, so you need to mitigate the risk of puncture by keeping your speed down. Also, don’t forget what the hard shoulder is for – you may encounter stationary vehicles.
There are other risks associated with travelling in convoy with other emergency vehicles. Drivers usually see the first vehicle, move over, allow it to pass, and then fail to realise there is more than one vehicle. There are two approaches in these situations. The first is to close right up and keep a minimum distance between vehicles, effectively travelling as one large vehicle. This doesn’t allow time for drivers to pull out in front of the second vehicle, but it does have associated risks and the second driver is very reliant on the decisions of the first driver, which isn’t ideal.
The second approach is to increase the distance between emergency vehicles to a few hundred yards. This allows people to see and react to the second vehicle in plenty of time and is a safer option in my opinion.
And finally, some thoughts on the mental aspects.
There are two elements of emergency response driving which are entirely dependent on the driver's own mental state. They are red mist and noble cause risk taking.
We're all familiar with red mist - it's the situation when a drivers emotions take over and their ability to make realistic dynamic risk assessments is seriously hampered by the amount of adrenaline being produced by their body. The adrenaline puts their body in "fight or flight" mode, which is a throwback to our animal days where the body is quickly prepared for running away or fighting by the affects of adrenaline - raised heart rate and blood pressure, and - worryingly for drivers - a tunnelling of their vision and reduction in awareness of their hearing. Fine motor skills become much more difficult and it dramatically changes a driver's thinking process.
Red mist shifts a driver's thinking on to the target or goal - the incident they are attending - rather than thinking about the job at hand - the driving.
The second element I mentioned - noble cause risk taking - allows drivers to justify their poor decisions by claiming that they are necessary because someone's life is at risk, or there is some other "noble cause" to justify their risky behaviour. Even for a driver who is fully in control of their emotions, noble cause risk taking can creep into their driving and create very real dangers.
Good quality driver training can help - if you're affected by red mist, for instance, a good grounding in systematic driving can at least give you a good "baseline" standard of driving to fall back on when the adrenaline is flowing.
But, ultimately, it's down to to individual drivers and their ability to recognise when these issues are arising, and having the ability to overcome them and keep their attention fully on the driving.
Anyway, that’s more than enough for now. If you’re an emergency response driver, feel free to share your experiences.
S. Gonzales Esq. said:
Good to see a return to The Jam lyrics.
While we're waiting for people who actually know something about the subject to contribute, I'll just link to the Chris Gilbert video of a blue light run. Is this the kind of relaxed progress you're talking about?
Yes, that's just the type of driving you should be aiming to achieve. It doesn't seem fast and rushed because it doesn't need to be fast and rushed, and you can clearly see the benefits of keeping a nice long following position, holding back and waiting for people to sort themselves out.While we're waiting for people who actually know something about the subject to contribute, I'll just link to the Chris Gilbert video of a blue light run. Is this the kind of relaxed progress you're talking about?
Red Devil said:
A good example of this numptiness @1:51 in the video: the (silver?) car ahead comes off the accelerator, brakes while still on the zebra crossing, and nearly comes to a halt just a few yards further on thereby causing unnecessary and avoidable hindrance to the smooth progress of the police car. I do wonder what thought process goes on in the heads of such people.
Superbly informative threads R U. I'm always learning something from each one, so please keep them coming.
Many thanks. There are a couple of examples of poor reactions in the video which I described in my original post.Superbly informative threads R U. I'm always learning something from each one, so please keep them coming.
At 00.32 you'll see a dark van emerge from the offside and then immediately pull out of the way. It was clear from their actions that the driver had seen the approaching police car, so why not just wait in the junction until it had passed?
And at 1.58, you'll see a white van pull out to pass an estate car in front. The estate car has seen the police car, but the van hasn't and pulls out to pass. This is extremely common.
Just watched the video (don't know why I didn't watch it when it was first posted).
The driving is horrendous, and falls well below the standards expected by emergency drivers these days.
The first thing which strikes me is that the driver overwhelmingly puts progress over every other consideration - especially safety.
The driver is extremely pushy, gets far too close to many vehicles with no clear idea about what he expects them to do, and limits his options by pushing into gaps and then having to stop or change his plan at the last minute.
Speed is inappropriate in many places, but especially when going through red lights.
And to top it off, I watched his choice of route through the traffic at Trafalgar Square and just thought "what the #^*% are you doing?".
Very poor.
But, a good example of how not to do it, and a very good example of noble cause risk taking. The driver was at risk of a number of accidents throughout that journey and any accident would take him and his vehicle and crew out of the game,. In addition, other emergency services would have had to attend his accident and even more emergency services would have to replace him and his crew to attend the original incident.
The priority is to get to the incident. Taking a few seconds or minutes longer to get to an incident safely can actually save a lot of time and hassle in the long run.
The driving is horrendous, and falls well below the standards expected by emergency drivers these days.
The first thing which strikes me is that the driver overwhelmingly puts progress over every other consideration - especially safety.
The driver is extremely pushy, gets far too close to many vehicles with no clear idea about what he expects them to do, and limits his options by pushing into gaps and then having to stop or change his plan at the last minute.
Speed is inappropriate in many places, but especially when going through red lights.
And to top it off, I watched his choice of route through the traffic at Trafalgar Square and just thought "what the #^*% are you doing?".
Very poor.
But, a good example of how not to do it, and a very good example of noble cause risk taking. The driver was at risk of a number of accidents throughout that journey and any accident would take him and his vehicle and crew out of the game,. In addition, other emergency services would have had to attend his accident and even more emergency services would have to replace him and his crew to attend the original incident.
The priority is to get to the incident. Taking a few seconds or minutes longer to get to an incident safely can actually save a lot of time and hassle in the long run.
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