Automated speeding fines madness.

ado

The trouble with the news story is that it makes no distinction between tickets for emergency and non emergency jobs, non ambulance tickets, and for tickets where guidelines have not been followed.

A speed camera can't tell the difference between a vehicle responding to an emergency and one which isn't so a driver making a mistake and triggering a speed camera would look exactly like one going through on blues and twos. As such the reason for the vehicle breaking the speed limit needs to be scrutinised with a ticket for a vehicle responding to an emergency being over ridden whilst in the other example the fine and points being applied.

Secondly ambulance crews do not have carte blanche to go at whatever speed they want. Police with a standard authority for example are not expected to drive more than 20mph above the prevailing speed limit when on blues and twos, so a police officer being caught over that limit would be expected to justify that extra speed and might be prosecuted if they can't. I'd expect ambulances to have a similar system, partly because driving any emergency vehicle above the speed limit and through red lights, junctions etc, is dangerous and shouldn't be undertaken lightly.

Lastly some of the tickets might have been for ordinary patient transport or even staff going between locations. They might still show in the figures as being credited to the ambulance service but clearly they would not have an exemption to break limits.

I also want to point out that the same system applies to police officers and that we have to justify our speed when NIPs get issued. I always note a grade one in my PNB and tell control when I have triggered a camera so it can be added to the incident log. Despite that I have received a number of NIPs each of which I have had to justify to my sergeant or inspector. They were all received for emergency drives and were all written off, but not before a lot of bureaucratic hurdles had to be jumped through, in exactly the same way as the ambulance service have to.

One of my local MPs though keeps questionning why the police break the speed limit so often and get NIPs, which I presume displays a massive ignorance of how we do our jobs!

InsideInsurance

facade wrote: »

And that takes 40 hours a month?
They really need an overhaul of their computer system as the BBC figures work out to about 1600 tickets a year, 133 a month, so they are spending 20 minutes on each one. Even the computers we have at work are faster than that, including switching on.

It really should be a 2 minute job for a basic admin person with a stock letter to be sent assuming the driver was on a blue light call.

Agree with others that it shouldnt be a blanket exception for them, they just need a much more efficient process. Certainly a few coppers I've known all admit to using blue lights to get home for dinner etc if they are running late (though these are all retired guys so perhaps modern cars track the use of lights more)

ado

rich13348 wrote: »

The problem with cancelling all tickets before they go out when a blue light is visable is that the ambulance driver would only have to put lights on for 10 seconds or less while passing a speed camera and the get off with speeding for no good reason. I've seen plenty of police cars put blues and toos on just to get to the other side of a roundabout then turn them off again. So I wouldn't put it past ambulance drivers either.

....or more likely they get asked to respond to a grade one which then gets cancelled or other more local crews respond meaning that the vehicle you have seen then cancels its blues and twos.

ado

InsideInsurance wrote: »

It really should be a 2 minute job for a basic admin person with a stock letter to be sent assuming the driver was on a blue light call.

Agree with others that it shouldnt be a blanket exception for them, they just need a much more efficient process. Certainly a few coppers I've known all admit to using blue lights to get home for dinner etc if they are running late (though these are all retired guys so perhaps modern cars track the use of lights more)

I don't know any police who would do that but if they did they should have the book thrown at them. I can't emphasise enough how potentially dangerous a blue light run is so they need to be justified and only used when necessary.

InsideInsurance

ado wrote: »

I don't know any police who would do that but if they did they should have the book thrown at them. I can't emphasise enough how potentially dangerous a blue light run is so they need to be justified and only used when necessary.

How potentially dangerous it is will depend on what they are doing and where. I'm not sure they were doing 100 mph in a 30 or running red lights but certainly using it to get people to change lanes on motorways etc - obv this does involve some risk but a very different order of magnitude

facade

InsideInsurance wrote: »

It really should be a 2 minute job for a basic admin person with a stock letter to be sent assuming the driver was on a blue light call.

My point exactly.

The S172 is sent out same as for you and me, on receipt the admin clerk enters the reg. number and time, then clicks on a few boxes, and gets either a stock letter/form filled out with all the details, or the name of the driver for the S172. If they get as many as the BBC reckon, they would be foolish not to have that set up.

Typical BBC non-story.

R34GTT

Would it really be so hard for all registrations of emergency vehicles to be held in a database table which is linked to the ANPR system of speed cameras? Any speeding emergency vehicles would just be filtered out before tickets are issued.

OK so some non essential speeding may occur but it would be beneficial overall. If that was a major concern then it is not rocket science for systems to be put in these vehicles to log the periods when the blue lights are on and sync to another table which in turn can be queried when the vehicle is caught speeding. This would easily filter out legitimate speeding. I find it frustrating that in 2015 such flawed processes can exist when solutions are obvious.

alastairq

Re-the above?

Why should the Law apply to some, yet not others?

The biggest issue in my mind, with folk in general, when considering 'emergency' vehicles, and their drivers, lies with a complete and total misunderstanding of what is involved with driving an emergency vehicle...and what the drivers are actually trained to do, and be aware of.

Because of a lamentable lack of high profile, government-led, information concerning emergency vehicles, and how other drivers should respond to them, everybody tends to make up their own minds as to what action to take regarding those emergency vehicles.

This inevitably leads to drivers committing totally inappropriate action, which not only impedes the emergency vehicle driver, but also severely raises the risk levels to other road users.

Yet everybody has this idea, that they know what to do for the best.

Which, more often than not, is not the best idea at all.

We drivers are all intelligent people,are we not?

We all like to think we can exercise what we 'see' as, common sense.

Regarding the exercising of 'common sense', nobody can do that, unless & until they are fully aware of the boundaries,or parameters, within which to exercise that 'common sense'.

But still folk make up their minds, based upon only a smidgen of accurate information.

The camera enforcement system works fine. [there should be more of them, enforcing other areas like, signage & road markings, too]

The issue is, nobody likes to be caught being naughty.

Nilrem

rich13348 wrote: »

The problem with cancelling all tickets before they go out when a blue light is visable is that the ambulance driver would only have to put lights on for 10 seconds or less while passing a speed camera and the get off with speeding for no good reason. I've seen plenty of police cars put blues and toos on just to get to the other side of a roundabout then turn them off again. So I wouldn't put it past ambulance drivers either.

The reason they'll put them on approaching roundabouts etc is to warn people at the roundabout/approaching it from other directions.

There is zero requirement for the police to use their lights and sirens for their speeding exemption (the lights/sirens are there for warning others primarily).

IIRC the actual advice to the police etc these days is that sirens shouldn't be used too much (people complain when the emergency services use them all the time that they could), which is why they tend to "blip" them for a few seconds unless they're in a real hurry or there is a queue of traffic.

The best option would probably be for the trusts to supply a list of the registration numbers of their ambulances and for the camera operators etc to put them on a "no action unless speed exceeds" (and have a higher limit), but that's then open to abuse and error.

EssexExile

When this problem was first noticed, many years ago, the blue lights on ambulances around these parts were rewired so one stayed on all the time & would always show in the photo. Doesn't help when there isn't a photo of course.