When is going through a red light and killing someone NOT dangerous driving?

When you’re driving a police car, silly!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-20158333

I’m gobsmacked that a jury could pass a not-guilty verdict in this case.

I’m not surprised. Maybe a careless driving charge, but they couldn’t do him for that

I take it you know more than the minimal facts on that story druid?

Even on what’s there, doesn’t seem so cut and dried to me, but I’m no expert.

The officer said he believed the taxi driver had seen him and had slowed down to let him pass, but that the taxi’s speed then increased.
PC Brown told the court that he immediately applied his brakes when he realised the taxi was coming through the junction, but said it was too late.

I’m gobsmacked

Are you really ??

Seems to make perfect sense from the details in the link you posted.

According to current legislation, a driver is guilty of dangerous driving if:

* the way he or she drives falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver
* it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous

Maybe my expectations of competent and careful are too high?

Pc gets off with a more severe charge, paramedic gets done for lesser charge even though person who walked/ ran in front of his response car was drunk, and up to his eyeballs on meds…
Hmm.
Edit- poss not up to his eyeballs, but still..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-19651054

But at the same time Druidh, if you were in an emergency situation you’d expect the police to be giving it some with blue’s n two’s wouldn’t you?

Pc gets off with a more severe charge, paramedic gets done for lesser charge even though person who walked/ ran in front of his response car was drunk, and up to his eyeballs on meds…
Hmm.

sadly consistency is a totally different problem

According to the article, the police car was responding to an emergency call, but unless I’m being dumb and missing it, it doesn’t say whether he had blues and twos on, which is a pretty important detail I’d have thought.

Maybe my expectations of competent and careful are too high?

Or your threshold of desire to post a topic about it is too low.

it doesn’t say whether he had blues and twos on, which is a pretty important detail I’d have thought.

No – lights and sirens don’t absolve you from the responsibility to drive safely.

Maybe my expectations of competent and careful are too high?

No but I think your expectations need to take into account that he was attending to an emergency.

You can’t honestly expect emergency services to wait at red traffic lights? That would cause more deaths than it would save!

They have sirens and flashy lights for a reason.
A question might be: why did the cabbie drive into the path of a police vehicle with its lights and sirens going?
Without knowing more facts than are in that report it sounds like the cabbie shares a fair bit of the blame.

I’m no expert, but my guess is if you have blues and twos on, there MAY BE a slightly higher chance that other drivers will be aware of You.

Oh…and…avoiding the detail druid?

“I’m gobsmacked that a jury could pass a not-guilty verdict in this case.“

Why? You’re aware of the legal differences between dangerous and careless? As an emergency responder he has to evaluate risk in a slightly different context to other road users; and making an error of judgment is not necessarily dangerous driving by the legal definition, but is probably careless (which he’d already admitted – evidently the CPS for some reason decided to go for dangerous instead).

Sections 2A and 2B are the pertinent ones:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/contents

In my world view – if someone gets hit by an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens going it’s their own fault. If however the guy driving the police car didnt have the lights and sirens going then it’s a completely different ball game.

To be fair, red lights are supposed to be treated as give ways..
Although where the crash occurred is a pretty big, open junction and visibility shouldn’t have been an issue- unless there was very heavy traffic.
Three calls for officer in danger is about as bad as it gets for the police though- when that call comes through, anyone in that part of the city that can is gonna head for it- can only guess he had a fair bit of rest must going on.

It’s expected for ambulances, fire engines and police to go fast through lights and driver at speed, tbh now I think about it i’m surprised I’ve never heard of an accident before(obviously must have been) but I don’t think you can then decide to jail them when accidents do happen, it’ll hardly be like the police guy deliberately caused an accident.

Just one of those sad things that are bound to happen. Shame alround, but jail for the polis isn’t going do any good at all.

When is going through a red light and killing someone NOT dangerous driving?

When a court says so after due legal process, I’d say.

Sometimes the tiniest error on the part of a driver can result in a death.

In this example, a police officer driving to an emergency has made, in his own words, “a split-second decision. I judged it and I judged it wrong… …I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I was going to an emergency call and I made a misjudgement. It was my fault.”

A run-of-the-mill driving error can occasionally have devastating consequences, a moment of inattention or misjudgement on the part of a driver in a high stress situation that results in a fatal collision.

Surely we want the courts to punish people on the basis of the offence, not the consequences!

Lets not forget that the guy who was killed made a driving error too – failing to see that a cop van was coming through a red light….

There are no high speed junctions on Great Western Road.

It’s expected for ambulances, fire engines and police to go fast through lights and driver at speed, tbh

No it’s not, they have to treat them as give way they have no authority on over a road user going through on the green. If the others yield the may proceed with caution, going off what little details we have that appears to be what happened but the Taxi driver didn’t stop when the Officer thought he was going to.

It’s expected for ambulances, fire engines and police to go fast through lights and driver at speed

No it’s not. In fact they’re supposed to do anything but go fast through lights.
As someone said above, red lights are to be treated as a Give Way, nothing else. The way we were taught was that we should come to a stop to check the junction’s clear before proceeding through it.

“Surely we want the courts to punish people on the basis of the offence, not the consequences!”

Heard of the thin skull syndrome?

i’m surprised I’ve never heard of an accident before(obviously must have been)

Reasonably common – though not usually fatal. there was one in Glasgow city centre where an officer ran a red light, hit and killed a female cyclist, then turned his blues and twos on a fraction of a second later. I forget the outcome of that one.

If the others yield the may proceed with caution, going off what little details we have that appears to be what happened but the Taxi driver didn’t stop when the Officer thought he was going to

it does not read like the taxi driver ever stopped merely the copper thought he would.
I dont think that is preceding with caution

That said i would not like to be the one with the lights making the call tbh but he made the wrong one and his cautionary speed was enough to kill him when he hit him.

Sad events and I am not sure what we can do to ever prevent this happening and i dont feel the need to lynch mob him.

Cynic-al – yup, heard of it, and I think as much of it as I think of Blairs masterpiece death by careless driving offence…

Like I said, how do we want the courts to operate, punish the offence, or punish the consequence?

That said i would not like to be the one with the lights making the call tbh but he made the wrong one and his cautionary speed was enough to kill him when he hit him.

Sad events and I am not sure what we can do to ever prevent this happening and i dont feel the need to lynch mob him.
It can be a difficult call to make sometimes. Things like this just go to show how severe the consequences can be if you get it wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, the driving is the most stressful part of the job in the ambulance service and not particularly enjoyable.
Speaking for myself and many of my colleagues, the only way to try and prevent things like this happening is to slow down and that’s exactly what a lot of us do now. No point in driving flat out to get to a job and either having a bump or getting stressed out by it!

What he said^. As much as we have to drive in a progressive (and safe) manner I find myself driving a bit slower as conditions dictate. Ie, a bit faster at nights, slower during the day, much slower at around 15:00..
It can be hard going though- especially if we have to go from one end of the city to another at rush hour for, say, an arrest. Always seem to go a wee bit faster for those!

Maybe my expectations of competent and careful are too high?
Or your threshold of desire to post a topic about it is too low.

When a court says so after due legal process, I’d say.

Perfectly put.

From the photo on the article, it doesn’t look like it was a particularly high speed collision…the vans are still close to each other. It sounds like it was a low speed collision but the Taxi driver was particularly unlucky with his injuries. It seems strange that seeing as he offered to plead guilty to death by careless, they still chose to pursue a dangerous charge which is much harder to prove.

I haven’t seen an emergency services vehicle go fast through red lights for a few years now, they all seem to come over the stop line at walking pace and then accelerate across the junction. He obviously wasn’t doing that and he has seemingly held his hands up and admitted it.

wisepranker – Member

It’s expected for ambulances, fire engines and police to go fast through lights and driver at speed

No it’s not. In fact they’re supposed to do anything but go fast through lights.
As someone said above, red lights are to be treated as a Give Way, nothing else. The way we were taught was that we should come to a stop to check the junction’s clear before proceeding through it.

I probably worded that wrong, change, go fast through lights, to go through lights. Point is it’s expected the they will sometimes break that normal rules of the road.

So while you can’t completely ignore reckless driving, accidents do have to be expected, I’m happy to leave it to the courts to decide if an emergency services driver has gone over the top. This one was sad, but it sounds like a slight error in judgement rather than completely recklessness. That’s the kind of thing that is to be expected now and again.

It sounds like it was a low speed collision but the Taxi driver was particularly unlucky with his injuries

Perhaps. Or perhaps it was the lack of seatbelt.

It sounds like he saw the taxi, was considering what it was doing/going to do, saw it slow down which made him think the taxi driver had seen him, so carried on. Evidently it transpires that the taxi slowing down wasn’t because the driver had seen him, but that’s exactly the sort of indication that you look for when you’re trying to evaluate whether a driver has seen you or not, same as you look for a left indicator or brake lights from a vehicle ahead of you. Whilst his assessment of what the taxi driver was doing and had seen turned out to be wrong, it wasn’t an unreasonable assessment based on what he saw. In a perfect world he would have had time/space (ie. been going a little bit slower) to react to any eventuality. In a perfect world.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it was the lack of seatbelt.

A very good point.

Taxi drivers don’t routinely wear a seatbelt.

I’m more interested to hear why the family of the victim were “disgusted by Strathclyde Police’s conduct”

It sounds like the officer involved held his hands up and admitted his error of judgement and therefore his guilt.

Perhaps before it had gotten to court the police had decided to circle the wagons and deny they were at fault?

it does not read like the taxi driver ever stopped merely the copper thought he would.

It doesn’t which is why I never said he did thanks for pointing it out again for me though.

I’ve had one accident in over 20 years of driving in emergency situations, thankfully no one was hurt. The other driver turned in front of me to go into a junction as I was coming alongside her. She hadn’t looked in her mirrors, I had my lights and sirens on and because of this and her simple mistake of not checking her mirrors I wasn’t found blameworthy.

It’s hard at times to judge what people are doing, you’ll see them slow down and move as if to acknowledge you then just as you get near them you’ll they’ll move out again or keep moving so the gap you had is getting smaller.

Seems there was an error of judgement here and sadly the consequences were tragic, he’s admitted he made a mistake and accepted he was careless. Sad for the family but the court has made a judgement based on what we haven’t heard.

As above red lights are treated as give ways, but I tend to drive a fair bit faster when I know someone is stuck in a burning house as opposed a bin in town on fire. Gotta weigh up the risks of where your goin and what for

That said I got safely to a bad crash the other day and an hour later hit two parked cars goin to a van fire doh lol tho the gap down the street was about 10mm smaller than the engine right at the end due to way the cars parked and it was only at waking pace. I patiently await my punishment for that 🙁

hit two parked cars goin to a van fire doh lol tho the gap down the street was about 10mm smaller than the engine right at the end due to way the cars parked. I patiently await my punishment for that

Obstructing an emergency vehicle. Tough.

Well I hope so but I’m not holding my breath tbh

Yeah it’s not a theory I’ve tested but been close a few times.

I predict another 300 pager with dozens of people falling out with each other over this..

all over again. :O/

What thegreatape said ^^ and I wouldn’t pass judgment on the PC without having all the facts the jury had at their disposal.

For those passing comment, and haven’t experienced ‘blue light’ driving, I can assure you that there are very very few who have a ‘gung-ho’ attitude and it is drummed into you in training that the penalties, legally and professionally, are normally severe as it is your responsibility to drive safely. You ‘make progress’ as safely and quickly as you can but occasionally someone does something so unpredictable, monumentally stupid, or their initial actions are open to mis-interpretation as appears to be the case here, that accidents happen. The taxi driver is also a ‘professional’ driver and I can fully appreciate that the PC could have thought, in the split second he had to make the decision, that he had been seen and the taxi was stopping and giving way. It does appear to be quite an open junction, with good visibility.

druidh – While it doesn’t compare to what the taxi drivers family are going through, I would imagine the PC has also gone through hell and has at least admitted that he was at fault.