I fought the law....

Eagles1905

Hi all,

I had an interesting experience whilst exiting the M23 this weekend (Saturday evening approx 21:00). A Police Van en-route to an incident raced up behind me and blasted sirens and flashed full beams to presumably ask me to get out of the way. However I was on a busy slip road with traffic to my left hand side, said van was almost bumper to bumper with me so I indicated and pulled into the left hand lane, causing a car or two behind me to slam on thier brakes and hurl abuse my way! I had little choice but to move out of the way, luckily I had enough room otherwise the Police van would have caused me to crash....

Is this worth taking up with either Sussex or Surrey police? Obviously nothing happened and there was no incident. Am I making something out of nothing or should I report the van back to the police? I appreicate the incident they were attending was definately more important than my destination, however its left me a little bit wound up....

Advice appreciated.

AdrianC

Sounds like somebody's observation skills are a little lacking.

Eagles1905

I disagree, for context I did see the Police van early on but literally had no where to go, always thought you were to move out of the way of emergency vehicles in a safe manner, at the time there was no oppotunity to move into the left hand lane until the van was almost on top of me.

Fat_Walt

Eagles1905 wrote: »

I disagree, for context I did see the Police van early on but literally had no where to go, always thought you were to move out of the way of emergency vehicles in a safe manner, at the time there was no oppotunity to move into the left hand lane until the van was almost on top of me.

You saw it nice and early on the motorway and still couldn't get out of the way in time?

The don't go much quicker than 70, so had you been paying attention or not so determined to make one more overtake this wouldn't have happened.

AdrianC

If there was space in front of you, then could you not make space for the van by accelerating?
If there was no space in front of you, then the police van wasn't going anywhere either.

At the end of the day, yes, you are supposed to move out of the way when safe to do so. It wasn't, it seems, safe for you to move into a gap that wasn't there.

Sounds like you panicked and over-reacted, and are trying to blame the police for that.

Eagles1905

Please note this was on the slip road exiting the motorway, so one lane into two left or right with traffic queing either side. So regardless of how early I saw the Van I had to wait for a suitable oppotunity to merge into the left lane in a safe manner, if I had not I would have collided with the car to my left. If this had been on the open motorway there wouldnt have been an issue.

I posted this asking for a little advice, not to have my driving skills evaluated. Additionally in ten years plus of driving I have not been involved in a single RTA or been on the recieving end as so much as a speeding ticket.

AdrianC

Eagles1905 wrote: »

I posted this asking for a little advice, not to have my driving skills evaluated.

You asked for advice on whether you can complain to the police. The answer is no, because this was a situation of your own making.

MEM62

The blues and twos are not aimed at you specifically. They are to alert all traffic so that, in this case, vehicles can jointly create space for the Police vehicle to pass through. The vehicles on your inside have no cause to be frustrated as they should also appreciate that an emergency vehicle is answering a shout.

I do not believe that you have cause for complaint.

gilbert_and_sullivan

I think some officers can be a little overeager to force their way through, ramming yourself right up someones chuff with siren blaring and headlights flashing constantly in the car in fronts mirror doesn't always work best, because (and i'm not saying it happened here), it can disconcert alarm and panic the drivers immediately in front when their mirrors are filled by such a vehicle driven aggressively.

If there's nowhere to go there's nowhere to go, 3ft behind someone and still rolling at them won't make them vanish.

Having said that i've seen police vehicles on blues/twos trying desperately to get past people who haven't fathomed the use of mirrors yet, and each case will be on its merits.

What could the OP do?, forget it IMHO, if the officer is too pushy he'll come unstuck sooner or later and either get retrained or lose his pursuit/response driver status if he makes a habit of it.
If it was indeed the OP's mistake, then he too will learn from it, as would we all.

Just as the rest of us, as the country overfills to bursting point with people and the corresponding traffic volumes go way past what the roads can cope with, the emergency services won't be getting there quite as quickly either, live with it cos its going to happen, the country voted democratically for it.

AdrianC

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

I think some officers can be a little overeager to force their way through, ramming yourself right up someones chuff with siren blaring and headlights flashing constantly in the car in fronts mirror doesn't always work best, because (and i'm not saying it happened here), it can disconcert alarm and panic the drivers immediately in front when their mirrors are filled by such a vehicle driven aggressively.

...but the OP assured us that he had seen them coming in plenty of time, remember?

spadoosh

Try and anticipate it better. You should be observant all the time in your car, which is why on your driving test you check your mirrors every 5 seconds. You dont just check them when your changing direction. At 70mph youll travel ~ 160 metres in 5 seconds. Slip roads are always quite a bit longer than that, they need to be long enough for a vehicle to go from stationary to the speed of the motorway and this includes HGV bearing in mind their 0-60 speeds can take upwards of 30 seconds. Put simply you didnt check your mirrors enough.


ETA i assume it was only you who hinder the progress of the police van. This is normally a good indicator as to who was at fault, especially seeing as there seemed to be quite a bit of traffic.