Procedure when a police car collides with you

helpingafriend

I should be grateful for any help on what the procedure is after being hit by a police car that was responding to an incident with lights and siren. So far a statement has been taken and the officer said that all was now over, but a letter from the Process and Collisions Unit states that they will investigate for up to 6 months and a further questionnaire may be required. I think this is a standard letter, but does anyone else have some more accurate knowledge please? BTW no claim is being made on insurance.

Thank you all in advance for your help.

mcjordi

iirc 6 months is the time limit for which criminal proceedings can be taken ( ie if they were gonna do either of your for anything motoring related)

police normally self insure anyway.

bigjl

They will try to find out if you were fully legal on the road.

The premise being if you were not legal to be on the road then you shouldn't have been there to be hit.

I was shunted by a Met Police VW Transporter back in 97

Traffic Sarge turned up within 20mins and a full investigation was done.

My car was given a good going over, when i asked one of the normal plod what was the going on he explained the above.

I had my car repaired via HelpHire and had a hire car for 2 weeks aswell.

The circumstances of the crash are obviously not given.

Some forces assume they are at fault as the vehicle was on blues but they are not all the same.

Any collision were the only loss is property, time or money is a learning experience.

Hopefully you get your car fixed ok.

OnanTheBarbarian

bigjl wrote: »

They will try to find out if you were fully legal on the road.

The premise being if you were not legal to be on the road then you shouldn't have been there to be hit.

I was shunted by a Met Police VW Transporter back in 97

Traffic Sarge turned up within 20mins and a full investigation was done.

My car was given a good going over, when i asked one of the normal plod what was the going on he explained the above.

I had my car repaired via HelpHire and had a hire car for 2 weeks aswell.

The circumstances of the crash are obviously not given.

Some forces assume they are at fault as the vehicle was on blues but they are not all the same.

Any collision were the only loss is property, time or money is a learning experience.

Hopefully you get your car fixed ok.

Lots of bad info in this post

The premise being if you were not legal to be on the road then you shouldn't have been there to be hit.

Although they may be able to do you for not being fully legal, i.e bald tyre, tax expired etc, it does not get rid of any civil liability they may have for the collision and even if you were pished out of your brains and behind the wheel, if a police or other emergency services vehicle on the blues collides with you through no fault of your own, you can claim against them.

Some forces assume they are at fault as the vehicle was on blues but they are not all the same.

Not even remotely true. I have acted for several police forces and ambulance trusts and they certainly do not roll over and accept blame just because they were on a shout at the time. Members of the public do many stupid things when an emergency vehicle is approaching them.

At the same time, I currently have a claim where I act for an elderly gent who was hit by a police BMW X5 which was overtaking on the wrong side of the road on a blind bend. Nasty head-on collision and the officers in the X5 decided to interfere with the scene and move vehicles and bully an elderly lady who also witnessed the collision (she was the vehicle they were trying to overtake). Liability eventually admitted after 6 months of messing about and disputing blame.


To the OP, the general procedure is that a senior officer attends the scene, statements are taken and the matter is then investigated. Rarely will plod prosecute one of their own.

Emergency services vehicles still have to drive in accordance with the highway code, with some exemptions, such as they can treat a red light as a "give way" line and proceed through, but they must take the utmost care. The category of emergency call also is relevant to the risks they can take.

helpingafriend

The situation occurred when the vehicle in question was already on a roundabout and became aware of the police vehicle, it pulled over and slowed or possibly stopped and the police vehicle, instead of passing behind to turn right, passed ahead and scraped the front. There is no question as to the legality of the vehicle, fully insured, tyres etc perfectly ok. In my opinion the incident was 100% the fault of the officer driving who has apologised.

roddydogs

All Police vehicles have a "Black Box" which tells them speed, etc.
Wether they let you see it is another matter.

InsideInsurance

What are you really asking?

The police will do initial checks that the vehicle is insured, owned correctly, taxed and normally that no one was drink driving.

Liability is determined in the normal manor and by no means is all police with blue lights on automatically liable, if anything they are generally less liable when colliding with moving vehicles as you evidently should have heard/saw them. Unfortunately I didnt hence I was at fault for my accident with them.

If you say they hit your stationary vehicle and you arent intending to claim then you will probably never hear anything else. Even in my case where I was at fault I never heard anything else about it. The van did have a few fresh scratches from my wing but had plenty of old ones too and so presumably they just decided to continue living with them.

helpingafriend

Thank you all very much for taking the time to respond. This is not actually my accident but it involved my elderly mother who is now terrified of having this hanging over her head for the next 6 months or even having her licence revoked. Hopefully this will now reassure her as the officer who took the statement did say nothing more would come of it.

topdaddy_2

If she did nothing wrong, then nothing to worry about. Again they are obviously going to have insurance( and be above board) so nothing to worry about there.consider this similar to being in a crash with a fleet vehicle from a large company.

FlameCloud

I doubt the police car will be insured.

bigjl

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

Lots of bad info in this post



Although they may be able to do you for not being fully legal, i.e bald tyre, tax expired etc, it does not get rid of any civil liability they may have for the collision and even if you were pished out of your brains and behind the wheel, if a police or other emergency services vehicle on the blues collides with you through no fault of your own, you can claim against them.



Not even remotely true. I have acted for several police forces and ambulance trusts and they certainly do not roll over and accept blame just because they were on a shout at the time. Members of the public do many stupid things when an emergency vehicle is approaching them.

At the same time, I currently have a claim where I act for an elderly gent who was hit by a police BMW X5 which was overtaking on the wrong side of the road on a blind bend. Nasty head-on collision and the officers in the X5 decided to interfere with the scene and move vehicles and bully an elderly lady who also witnessed the collision (she was the vehicle they were trying to overtake). Liability eventually admitted after 6 months of messing about and disputing blame.


To the OP, the general procedure is that a senior officer attends the scene, statements are taken and the matter is then investigated. Rarely will plod prosecute one of their own.

Emergency services vehicles still have to drive in accordance with the highway code, with some exemptions, such as they can treat a red light as a "give way" line and proceed through, but they must take the utmost care. The category of emergency call also is relevant to the risks they can take.

I think you will find they claim exemptions from the road traffic act.

The highway code is not really relevant is it?

And my post is factually correct.

You are free to disagree with the facts that i have posted.

All information gained from real life and not a text book.

The Ambulance service is different.

In my experience they assume it is the driver of the ambulance at fault if on blues as the assumption is made they were claiming an exemption at the time.

Since lights and sirens are merely visible and audible warning devices tat the driver of the vehicle displaying them may be about to or is claiming an exemption of the road traffic act.

I am happy you felt the need to spend ages disecting my post and adding various helpful "comments"

I had a quick skim of yours and got bored:rotfl: