Safe Speed Forums

http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/2008/ ... s-for.html

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Meh.

Sounds like he ignored a reasonable instruction which had been set in place for his and everyone else's safety.
Got what he deserved IMHO, although I fully expect this thread to develop into another HATO bashing, not qualified to make a judgement, who says he did anything dangerous, what powers will they be given next thread.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

I’ve often wondered how they stop the cars on the motorway. So it’s called a "rolling road block", eh? Sounds like a tricky thing to do, that does. The blokes who do it have my respect and cooperation.

The point is that rolling road blocks were always undertaken by the police.

Now they are undertaken by HATOs.

What next? What other jobs are to be taken from the police?

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The jobs has not been taken from the Police. The Police still can and do perform rolling roadblocks. In fact I saw them doing just that on th A14 the other day.

Why does it matter if it is the Police or HATOs that stop the traffic - you have no idea what the debris might be. It could be big heavy lumps of metal that fell off the back of a lorry strewn right across the carriageway - would you really want to hit that while a HATO sat and waited for the Police to shut the road?



Sadly, Rigpig's prediction didn't take long to come true.

I'd suggest anything that isn't related to catching crooks and bad people. For example removing junk from the roads. Coppers aren’t garbage men.

In this instance, HATO weren't trying to be police, or taking over from police, they were performing an operation to ensure the safety of the motorists and workers whilst the debris was cleared.

IMO it was right that he was prosecuted - he could well have killed or injured the people who were removing the debris.

This is one of the situations where the HATO really do come into their own.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Sixy... I agree absolutely.

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Ah, but if HATOs or a HATO-like organisation had existed back in the days when rolling roadblocks were first introduced, would responsibility for undertaking them still have been given to the trafpol? In other words, did the police always do them because it's a police task, or because they were the only people out there able to do it?

HATOs come in for a fair bit of stick, and I'll admit that in their early days I thought some of it was justified - back then the only first-hand experience I had of them was seeing them basically doing little more than cruising around with a queue of overly-timid drivers behind them too afraid to overtake because they weren't quite sure if it was a police vehicle or not, and sat on the hard shoulder hand-holding people who'd broken down (not that I'm saying being sat on the hard shoulder is an easy job - the rare times I've had to take to the HS I've been only too eager to get back off of it and onto the relative safety of the main carriageway), so from my perspective they really didn't seem to have any purpose in life other than to give the impression that there were more road patrols taking place.

These days however, it's now pretty clear to me that HATOs provide a genuine level of back-up to the trafpol, freeing up their scarce resources to do the jobs only a police officer can do - it's now a common sight to see a HATO unit performing traffic management at accidents, breakdowns etc. and last month I had my first encounter with a HATO-led rolling roadblock. So now my perspective is that things have changed for the better, their role seems to be more obvious and beneficial, and it's much harder to justify the generic HATO-bashing that still takes place.

And besides, anyone who willingly spends their working hours driving up and down the motorways in filthy weather like the stuff we've been having recently, whilst far too many of their fellow motorists demonstrate their lack of clue regarding what to do when the wet stuff starts to fall from the sky, probably deserves just a little bit more respect than we're giving them already...

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Chris

Very interesting how they slowly ease them in, isn't it?

First it will be rolling road blocks. Then directing traffic, then, one day, we'll say "Good Lord! When was it that HATOs were given the power of arrest?"

Slowly, but surely...

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Well the guy does sound like he was being a bit of an arse to me, but unless the debris was covering all 3 lanes and the hard shoulder, was it really necessary to stop all 3 lanes?

We don't have the full facts sadly, so I can only go off my own personal observations of HATOs doing stupid things eg.

- Parking on the hard shoulder with the front wheels pointing towards the carriageway (ie when they get hit, they end up in L1)

- Deciding to divert the entirety of the M4 onto a dual carriageway. Fair enough, but why drop it to a single lane in the run-up to the junction when both the sliproad and the dual carriageway were both two lanes and the obstruction was further ahead than that. Oh, this was at 6PM on a friday.

- Closing two lanes of M42 while a lorry changed a wheel. One lane would have been fine. Bonus points for this being very close to the M5 junction where you needed to be in those two lanes to go south.

There are more, but it's 4AM so I can't think of them right now.

Yes, the alternative would be to plan everything out, do everything all at once, and never change anything ever again. But I can see a problem there too ...

Well thats the problem isnt it.

We dont know exactly what the situation here actually was but, nevertheless, one cannot escape the nasty sneaking feeling that "certain personality types" (who might well be inclined to want to work in "enforcement" type organisations) will, once given the peaked cap, the uniform, shiny boots and a dayglo jacket (along ith a nice vehicle with a flashing light on top) tend to close all three lanes of a busy road in order to pick up a crisp packet on the grass verge simply because they have the power to do so!

(happens round here all the time!)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Whether it was or wasn't is irrelevant. Should motorists just be allowed to ignore a rolling road block then simply because, in their judgement, it wasn't necessary to close all three lanes?
If it wasn't the HATO's doing it then it may well be the police themselves and people would find a reason to level the same 'anti-authority abusing their powers' guff at them as well. Someone has to clear up after muppet motorists run into one another on straight roads and its the muppets we should be aiming our ire at, not the individuals or organisations who have to scrape the mess up afterwards.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Yes, no, maybe. None of the news coverage of this incident I've read explained what the debris was, nor how much of the carriageway was affected.

Perhaps they could have coned off the affected lane(s) and allowed traffic to squeeze through the remaining gap, but that might still have required a rolling block whilst the cones were placed, and then another one afterwards to collect the cones again...

Perhaps they could just have switched on the red X's above the affected lanes, and hoped that every single driver on the road at that time would take heed... sadly, my own observations suggest this wouldn't be likely - an increasing number of drivers seem to interpret the red X as "this is now your private lane in which to overtake all the numpties who've shuffled over into the other lanes"

Maybe the rolling block was an over-reaction to the situation, or maybe it was exactly the right thing to do - at the moment we simply don't know. But regardless, what we do know is that ignoring the "Don't Pass" message on the back of the HATO wagon was exactly the wrong thing for that driver to do...

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Chris

Careful. You have just pointed out a reason why drivers should never, EVER go faster than the posted speed limit.

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What, they close a three lane motorway for a crisp packet?

Oooo, cameras in the back of the sign, BIG MASSIVE fines for those caught travelling in the lane after the red cross.

I'd support their cars being crushed then and there myself.

Yes. Eventually some poor HATO will end up shunted into the path of a lorry because he parks up on the side of the road in the dangerous way he was taught to.

And one sure fire way to get the HATO scheme brought into disrepute would be for:

1) "Quick! There's a small table that's fallen on to the hard shoulder! Let's close all three lanes of the motorway so we can move it!

2) "Well, I do not care if you are fully qualified as a recovery operator and have been doing the job successfully for 20 years! I'll have you know I saw a Powerpoint slide show about how to recover broken-down vehicles, so I am going to tell you how to recover this vehicle!"

The HATO scheme is like a lot of ideas from the Blair/Brown government.

It's like what Dilbert's Boss said to himself after another of his ideas was shot down by his cynical staff: "How come the ideas are always so good when they are in my head?"

HATOs, CSOs, PFIs, etc., Good on paper but they seem less-than-brilliant in the execution.

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Have I? Please explain.

All I have pointed out is that if it wasn't a HATO doing the rolling roadblock it would be a police officer. Ignoring the instructions of either when they are trying to clear up after an incident is stupid and attracts the punishment it deserves.
What they could have done is irrelevant or at least the topic for another thread. What they did do was form a rolling roadblock which some arrogant prat decided to ignore.

It seems that the main objection to using HATOs for this job is that they may become another organisation with the power to tell us what to do. Boo hoo. As I said, if it wasn't them it would be the police doing the same thing.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.