Police cars hitting civilians

[frostyfours]

What the hell is going on? Three killed in the space of a week by police cars. Heartbreaking :-(

Exactly why people are being disingenuous when they whinge about other road users not hearing/seeing emergency vehicles - not everyone has good hearing/vision and emergency vehicle drivers need to understand that (in fact they're trained to understand that) and prepare for the unexpected. They're only allowed to break driving laws when safe to do so, so if they can't stop if the unexpected happens, then they're not following their training.

Ah I see, I didn't realise you consider deaf and blind people as just 'ignoring' their surroundings. Your post makes more sense now. I suppose a rather cruel way to look at it but if it makes you happy.

@VladmirsPoutine the vast majority are neither hard of hearing or visually impaired, just completely oblivious to their surroundings! Those who have visual or hearing issues know their issues and are generally more careful about their road safety. Those who are driving obviously shouldn't be if they have severe sight impairment, the majority of the time they simply don't want to pull over and delay their journey by 30 seconds.

Most cars are stolen just to be 'joy ridden' - so you're going to need the police to have the ability to pursue and stop them.

The problem you have is once a car is making off from a response police panda car, there are only 2 ways its going to end - it stops of its own accord or it crashes.

Since its making off from police, its obviously not going to stop of its own accord, so the only way its going to end is by crashing. That's when you get traffic cars involved with stingers or T-Pac to give you another tactic. But until traffic can get to the pursuit (depending on where they are travelling from) you're going to need the response panda car to maintain the pursuit.

There are a whole host of other jobs which police will go to where every second counts - ongoing domestics, missing people, suicidal people, fights, burglaries in progress, suspicious deaths etc etc

The reason why ambulances & fire engines travel slower is that they are a lot heavier. Fire engines will have 2-3 tons of water on board and ambulances start life as a short wheel base flat-bed lorry and have all their equipment added.

As a retired police officer, I can tell you that responding to an emergency is totally different to driving around in your own car. This is the single worst nightmare for an officer. I've been traveling at speed to a call & pedestrians have run out in the road thinking I'd stop for them. Or they cross the road & don't look. I had one teenager run out in front of me after she got off a bus. She had earphones in & couldn't hear the sirens. Don't demonise all officers. Wait for the facts before you class us all as a-holes. 🙄

I think the work done by all our emergency services is amazing and most of us wouldn't have the guts or human spirit to do it. Thank you all for risking your lives every day.......I wonder statistically how many accidents there are compared to the normal road using public.