Safe Speed Forums

I don’t know the rights and wrongs of this matter, but what we do need is some equity on the matter of speeding.

If it ok for a well qualified policeman to be speeding over 150mph in clear conditions, then why not for others with similar abilities and experience. Set this against the lady doctor called out by the police in the middle of the night who was then done for exceeding the 20mph limit over Tower bridge, where there was clearly no safety issue, or even any risk of damage to the historic monument.

It is hard to see the justification for the hugehly excessive speed within the 30mph limits, except on emergency duties, even in the early hours of the morning, since there can still be people about at that time.

The public roads do not seem to be the place to gain high speed familiarity with a new car, which should surely be done on a private track.

Oops. forgot this. there are actual formal training guidelines to follow when conducting police trainiing. Some ofyou may remember the case of the metroplodington police driving school killing a nurse (in south cambridgeshire i think) a few years ago. Since then training has been tightened totally, and there is even an NVQ in police pursuit driving, both practical and theoretical/management.

The H&S risk assessment for a simulated police pursuit excercise is about 50 pages thick. Plus there are the laws, the ACPO guidelines, force policy and individual driver preferences.

An intersting statistic is that the MetPlod have the dubious honour of killing and injuring more people that the rest of the UK forces put together. And nearly all accidents involving police vehicles are either not the police drivers fault, or are caused in "slow" speed ie around the local speed limit and in city centres, with busy junctions and pedestrians. not on the motorway. So high speed driver training would appear to be well beyond good enough. Its basic police drivier trainingthat needs to be looked at.....

GP

Spot on!

A lot of people seemed to be wrongly assuming that the Appeal Court would decide upon his guilt, which is absolutely not the case. The sole purpose of the appeal court was to examine whether the original court applied the law correctly in reaching the decision they did. If so then everything stands, but if not then this inherently re-opens all the other possible lines of enquiry that might have been pursued had the court not stopped at the point they did and acquitted him.

Therefore the only possible outcomes are either to deny the appeal or to re-try the case.

As to the new court effectively "trying" the old one, well the old one has just been tried and found to have got it wrong. Whatever the outcome of the retrial the judgment of the appeal is that the original court mis-applied the law. It is not necessarily saying that they made the wrong decision, but that they reached the decision they did for the wrong reasons.

Even if the re-trial also acquits (or as seems more likely dismisses) then the original court still got it wrong. Which is a tad embarrassing as it wasn't a lay magistrate but a professional District Judge who apparently based his decision on inadmissible evidence...

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good point on the private track idea, however, it cant work. The police driver training is based around making maximum safe progress, and beingable to stop on youre own side of the road in the distance seen to be clear. Thiswasformulated by a racing driver in the 1930's to reduce death on the roads of europe.

Hazard perception and reaaction cannot be taught in a sterile environment. I cannot 'pretend' to look out for hazards and other road users, training for a real situation on a track. It is done on the highway, initially below the speed limit, then speeds are increased until the course is passed or the student cannot cope and is removed from training. Only when deemed proficient, do student drivers approach the speeds of PC Milton. Even when trying, it is very hard to reach that speed safely. Not to say Milton was unsafe, but a police driver, acting corrctly will recognise sooner the risks and slow down as required. A normal driver (thishas been shown time and again in tests) will not and judge everything incorrectly.

You cannot have anybody driving at the same high speeds. Race track driving is far removed from normal and police driving. It is a rather embarrassing fact that police advanced drivers are the best. They are taught, trained, tested, and and then selected from applicants, based on natural ability and skill then put through formidable and rigorous further training to put them where they are. This is then polished to the point of 150mph nor being a challenge, on the basis that 30 or 70 cant be. This is why i feel i can tell a sales rep who is doing 110mph on a motorway not to do it. I dont want to start a mini war on this, but less than 1% of police drivers can or do achieve our status, which is why i wear my wings with pride - but 95% of drivers i meet on the roads think that they already can drive as well as me. I thought i could when i was younger, now i know the difference and it is a whole different story. That is why theyre not allowed to drive above 70mph and we are.

GP

shouldn't you be using high beam? Kangaroos are about the same size as a person and I have no problem seeing them - if they're sitting on the road - at 70mph and that's with standard high beams. Xenon are supposedly better.

Two problems come to mind... Firstly, a track is a very poor simulation of a normal road, there are no hazards at all, standardised surfaces, no kerbs, street furniture etc etc, so it would make a very poor simulation.

Secondly, with the exception of MIRA (which is used for manufacturer's "secret" testing and thus not exactly openly available - and the high-speed section is banked, thus even less "real") and Bruntingthorpe (which seems to be in almost continuous use) there are no tracks in the UK where a normal, or even moderately modified, road-car could get anywhere near its top speed... The straights simply aren't long enough.

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

Sorry - I was answering my own question with the quote - my point was that within the quote was the explanation of what the original judge did which was wrong. I want to ask WHY he was able to get it wrong. These same judges sit on cases where members of the public are on trial - and we know that some decisions are controversial, and therefore open to investigation.

Shouldn't more motorists be allowed the appeal.... for instance the case I illustrated? Also the death by dangerous driving where the driver got 5 years having been told to plead guilty due to "racing", which we discussed last year.


My only concern is that this should not be undertaken unannounced, and alone.
Would you agree my earlier point of better safety being achieved if other police vehicles were aware, and had the opportunity to monitor the road ahead of the test?
As a for instance.
What if a minibus full of revellers on their way home from a nightclub were just broken down on the hard shoulder, when PC Milton appears, and they decide to try and flag him down, and because they fear he might overlook them at the speed he is travelling, decide to foolishly step in front of his vehicle?
A car ahead, at a slower speed could watch for such an eventuallity, and reduce the risk.

My other concern over this case is the fact a fellow officer put forward the case. Why was it not an internal matter?
Did they know something of his character that we are not privy too?
I am pleased that you feel the video would reveal much about the case.
Now that the CPS has brought the subject to the fore, I feel the public need to be placated, and showing the video would achieve this.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I very much like the quality of your arguments, but I can't let this go:



If you mean 60mph on dipped headlights you might be right. But if headlights are dipped there should surely be other light around or you would be on mainbeam. I'm frequently able to learn a great deal about the road beyond the reach of my dipped headlights by using illumination from other vehicles both oncoming and travelling in the same direction.

Mainbeams are another ballpark. I proved last year (or was it the year before?) that my mainbeams were visibly lighting up my house from a mile away. But my judgement is that I wouldn't be able to stop for a man-sized object from more than ~120mph. In fact I'd call 120mph the mainbeam cut-off speed. A drunk in dark clothing lying in the road would be much worse. Maybe 90mph on mainbeam on a good day. Fortunately we don't meet such hazards very often, and never out of town in my experience.

I'm a big believer in being able to stop comfortably on my own side of the road within the distance that I know to be clear. (Hence: Safe Speed) I think it is truly a road safety fundamental.

And that's the aspect of the Mark Milton case that I cannot reconcile. 159mph on mainbeams with no other lighting seems dangerously fast to me. I'm not at all convinced that I could stop from 159mph even for a vehcile sized object with retro-reflective materials (numbr plate, reflectors).

I suggest that we'd need good streetlighting or daylight to support a speed of 159mph.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

1920s actually. And he was the Sir Mark Everard Pepys, the 6th Earl of Cottenham. After a couple of unsuccessful years fumbling around in the very early days at Hendon he was hired in in the late 1930s. You might call him the father of roadcraft.

There's a little more on: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/roadsafety.html

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

You sound fairly 'old school' and I approve. I've talked with a few modern 'Police Advanced' drivers and been seriously unimpressed. Standards are slipping - especially in some areas.

I don't know if you're aware but some Police forces now aim to pass 90% of their 'Advanced' classes. Sounds like madness to me. In Class One days it was frequently 25% or less and that was necessary to select appropriate talent, attitude and temperament.

Where they are passing 90% they CANNOT be applying adequate filters (IMO).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I seem to recall somebody saying at the time that the stretch of motorway was lit.
However, I feel this is why the video should be seen, so we can make an informed judgement.
Main beams would be precluded if a car was coming the other way, and an obstacle was not in the path of the oncoming lights, or was say - a drunk lying in the road.
I believe we had such an incident in Cumbria (not involving a police vehicle).

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I'm confused. In an ideal world, I agree, there would be no need for speed limits as each road user would deliver on his/her responsibility to drive safely. Unfortunately, there are enough idiots around for rules to be needed. Sensible speed limits (based on the 85th centile) enforced with discretion would deliver what we need.
"Safe Speed does not campaign against speed limits, but instead calls for proportionate and intelligent enforcement of all motoring laws". Right?
And if the police are allowed to exceed these limits (as they should be), I don't see why the criteria justifying this cannot be defined. "Emergency response" would cover most situations. But where speed limits are exceeded for training purposes or testing, it would be appropriate to document a simple test plan in advance.
I agree these are rules, but they protect both the police and the public better than a carte blanche for the police to drive as they please and justify later.
I'm prepared to believe that PC Milton is a responsble officer, doing his duty in this case to the best of his ability. Sensible rules would have protected him in this situation.

It's not as black and white. Most people, most of the time, can be trusted to use their sense of responsibility. A few people need rules.

In this case (high speed police driving) officers have managed just fine by behaving responsibly without much in the way of rules. This case is all set to take away individual responsibility and put rules in place. And that won't work.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

One extreme to the other, in other words. The problem today is that rules are framed in terms of 'black or white' because this sort of prescriptiveness sounds and looks good - it makes powerless inadequtes look as if they are in control of a situation because they have produced a document about it.

The problem here is that the 'powerless' people have created a real headache for themselves and everyone else, as detailed in the Press Release.

No, I'm not mistaken. You should re-read my post.

I too have excellent relationships with journos, but I hope I'd never put out a PR that could be misconstrued because I was in such a hurry to satisfy the journo. I could compromise my organisation for that.

There's a difference between being seen as a sensible, sound source and being seen as a useful 'rentaquote'.

With respect to PC Longpod and Pogo, it is not so much the 159mph on the motorway that is the matter of concern, since most obstacles there are likely to be illuminated and hence observable well in advance.

What is of far more of concern is the 80mph in a 30mph limit, since, as we are told, there could be non-illuminated pedestrians, or even drunks, in dark clothing who could unexpectedly get in the way.

What I know is that about 2years ago I got done for 40mph in near open country at the very extremity of a 30mph limit in clear dry daylight conditions, away from any junction, just moving along with the traffic, when there was not a pedestrian in sight, but there was a covert speed camera. Whatever the arguments and skill levels, I believe that my situation was much safer than the case of Mark Milton at 80mph in a 30mph limit at night, even if the streets appeared to be clear.

In as much that it might be argued that he needed to gain experience to develop his skills, well that is equally just as necessary and important for every other motorist, if to a lesser extent. We all need the opportunity to safely push the boundaries from time to time, as the prevailing conditions allow, to develop our knowledge and skills. Do that these days and you will quickly lose your licence, particularly as the night time capabilities of speed traps improve.

It used to be ok to travel up to 80mph to 90mph and occasionally 100mph, in appropriate conditions, with the occasional warning, to learn about limitations of vehicle control. That then provided the experience, skill and knowledge of how to drive safely in more constrained conditions. Of course now that no one is allowed to drive over 70mph, whatever the conditions, for fear of getting a speeding ticket, it is little wonder that the skill base and commitment of drivers has fallen and the decline in accidents has slowed, or even reversed.

If we are going to have speed restrictions applied with speed traps, then let the police be subjected to them as well, the same as the rest of us, other than when there are special reasons for it to be otherwise.

Don't forget he did this in Telford New Town, where there are many big wide roads with no properties along them that have 30 mph limits. I may be wrong, but I don't think he did it along a shopping or residential street.


Which is the case now - the police only do it when responding to emergency situations, or when training to respond to emergencies. They don't do it for a laugh.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Exactly...

We have some very odd and illogical speed limits around Telford. There are roads at NSL that go through new housing estates and there are 30s that are rural and completely devoid of anything other than a couple of large houses a long way away from the road (perhaps that's where some of our local councillors and "town managers" live!).

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

Well I would ask if any leniency would have been allowed for a normal driver caught in a speed trap only doing 40mph at the same 30mph limit and at the same time and location, I don’t think so. Where I was caught in a covert speed trap it was a perfectly open, clear and dry road, but that “didn’t cut any ice”.

Who are you trying to kid about the police only speeding on emergency duties. My Police authority have refused to provide the necessary information on this matter, since they know it won’t stand up to public scrutiny and that they would then have to start obeying speed limits, other than for emergency duties, the same as the rest of us.

I also don’t speed for a laugh, but where the conditions reasonably allow I would like to safely complete my journey as quickly as I reasonably can, but marginally exceed the speed limit these days and you will get a fine and points and there will be no allowance made for anything.

What is source for the goose then it is about time it was also the same for the gander.

Before anyone else remarks on the matter, I know it should be;
"What is sauce for the goose then it is about time it was also the same for the gander."