Damned if we do........

Maybe I'm just getting more sensitive in my old age, but I'm a lit bit fed up of mis-reporting by the media. This headline, is a classic example. The Police were not 'chasing' anyone. They were responding to an incident of a man seen with a handgun. As it turned out, it was just another wild goose chase, where no one was found. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but what if it had proved to be real? The headlines would be slightly different.

Any death on the road is a tragedy. Any death involving a Police vehicle is awful. However, let us face facts here. My force has a fleet of about 100 resonse cars. Each of those cars, clocks up roughly 30,000 miles a year (75% of which is not response speeds). That equates to 3 million miles a year. I have been doing the job for 20 years and in that time, no one has died as a result of a crash involving the Police. That's 60 million miles with no fatalities.

Obviously, in other force areas, there have been fatalities. (Currently averaging 40 a year in England & Wales). There are 43 forces, most of which are bigger than mine. Lets say the average number of cars is 150 (It's probably much higher). So, that's 6450 response cars, which equates to 193,500,000 miles per annum. That equates to one death every 4,837,500 miles. When put into perspective, are the figures that bad?

The average death per year figure, measure deaths involving police. That could mean, drivers failing to stop for police, innocent people killed by driver's failing to stop, rubberneckers, dozy idiots ignoring 'Police Slow' signs, as well as deaths as a result of a police car collision.

So, what do you want? A police service that ambles along, at snails pace for fear of causing a collision, arriving too late to be of any use, or one that responds promptly, at the risk of the occasional crash?

In the ideal world, we would have both. However, back in the real world, I know which I would choose.