Speeding -- it's not just the fine and/or the ban

[Byker28i]

As I said before, tracks are not indicative of roads. They are designed for high speed driving, aren't covered in potholes, drains etc, and are a lot wider!

Bernie - it's clear you aren't going to shift in your views, and no matter which way you want to spin it, I brought up tracks purely as a discussion point about a certain class1 driver taking the Vectra to the limit of it's ability at speed. As such and learnign about the cars ability at the limits then it's the perfect environment. In fact many polices suggest that as a suitable place for Joe Public to speed

As for getting coppers to a track, why not, police have training days factored in. If many forces wanted to share the cost of hiring a track for a day then many could. It doesn't have to be a dedicated race track as there are few of those around, but some forces already use airfields etc for pusuit training. Cost of these are relatively small and could be run in conjunction with a trackday compaby who are the specialists in these. It's around the £3-5K anyway to hire a track for the day.

The reason they dont, or the reason I was given was why should they, when they can send PC bloggs out to evaluate on roads for no cost. It's all about the cost.

 

[Steve Smith]

Good fun weren't they?

I have never owned one and didn't really like them but my brother now has one in red with black vinyl roof which is in very nice condition. The passage of time has made it look a bit more interesting to me.


Steve.

 

[Bernie174]

You're right, I am not going to change my opinion, simply because there's no reason to do so.

The system worked fine for years, no one knew about it granted, but more importantly, the roads were not littered with wrecked police cars either. So the proposition it is dangerous, in reality has no support.

I brought up tracks purely as a discussion point about a certain class1 driver taking the Vectra to the limit of it's ability at speed. As such and learnign about the cars ability at the limits then it's the perfect environment.

Sigh......it's not all about speed though is it? It's about driving on a road surface that isn't designed to drive at high speed in the same way as track is. It's about knowing how well the vehicle will go round a bend. Thats not the bends on tracks thats the ones where we work. It's about how well, or not, a vehicle will stop on different surfaces in different conditions, not a constant surface of a track. In order to do that you need to be doing the speeds you do on calls and on the roads you use to go to those calls on.

We don't use tracks for the original driving courses, we use the roads, and guess what, the only speed limits we obey are 30's & below. The rest of the time it's as fast as the car will go for the road and traffic conditions. Why? Because thats the environment we have to work in, not on a track.

A track is fine for a member of the public, its sod all use to the environment the emergency services use.

Costs aren't a factor, as you say it's not expensive, it's the return, there isn't one and practicality. It means taking operational cars off the road, it means stripping police off the street. For the reasons I've given the return is zero.

The objections you keep putting forward really have no basis in reality. Your objection seems to be based around your opinion of one police officers actions. You have nothing to substantiate that perception, so try taking that away from your opinion, and try looking at the reality, no mass carnage on the roads, no 1000's of kids dead. A very real need to do it, and no practical alternative. At the end of the day, I'd far prefer to find out, for example the station van had a serious braking fault in practice at 3am when there is nothing else on the roads, that at 4pm when I am doing the same sorts of speeds and the roads/pavements are full of people. If you can't see the sense in that then we are wasting our time.