im with gaspode on this - luck of the road.

everything has a risk attached to it.

 

I see the need to do some training on public roads

My concern is that when things go wrong, justice is properly served

On the facts stated, cresting a blind hill at over 100 is rather more than I would describe as careless

 

Final story here, including some video showing a reconstruction. Refreshing to see some class from the Williams family, no screaming for compensation or anything like that. All very sad.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/l...re/7657421.stm

 

A certain amount of risk is acceptable otherwise you'd never leave the house.

You have a right to expect to drive down a road and NOT get hit at 104mph (combined impact a conservative 140?) by a the police, the very people who are supposed to be preventing accidents at over a hundred miles per hour.

And if a car on a training exercise can be involved in an accident of this type surely there's a question mark over whether the training is any good, particularly with regard to observation and judging the conditions

 

The police car had done a maximum of 104mph in the lead up .... prior to the collision - it was not doing 104mph when they hit .... that said it was still IIRC about 90

There is nothing wrong with the training in general - I would say there was certainly a problem with the training in this case though !! There is - IMO - no need to do those speeds on B roads to learn how to satisfactorily use the equipment.

I have done this course and only did that speed on a motorway - on the sort of roads I have seen in the pictures we were doing around 75.

It is for the driver following the target vehicle to drive their own drive and not get sucked in to a speed they are either uncomfortable with or that is inappropriate for the road / conditions - that is what advanced training is about and why only Police Advanced / Level 1 drivers do it .... If one of the pupils on the course is a lower standard of driver then they don't drive.

When this story originally broke I was at a loss to understand just how it happened .... and to some extent still am. If for whatever reason you aren't happy with the speed of the target vehicle you would, in real life, let it go. If the instructor / lead car is too quick you let it go and they are forced to slow down in order you can keep up and allow the pupil using the equipment in the passenger seat to do the training. That said, IMO it shouldn't be that quick in the first place ... as I have stated.

This was just a very sad incident for all and not one I can see - I hope - being repeated .... Most regard this course, me included, as a gentle week away from government targets and general abuse.

 

It's one accident out of how many times plod race around training like that? statistically it didn't happen. It's tragic for those involved yes, but life's tragic.

Shit happens someties so get over it.

 

I was just about to post something similar Nick.

Accident.

Could it have been avoided? - of course. As with every accident. Ifs and ands were pots and pans....

 

The video reconstruction on the link I posted above shows they were going too fast for that piece of road, the Volvo would have been airborne shortly before the collision and, of course the steering wouldn't have worked hence it ended up on the wrong side of the road.

 

No shit sherlock

 

"You were going too fast, you bloody hooligan!"

Bit like I was the other day, when I kerbed a wheel. Obviously if I'd stopped before that point, the accident wouldn't have happened because the vehicle would have been stationary.

"You took the wrong trajectory, you bloody hooligan!" no-one ever says that, do they?