Get out the way.......

Shifty1962 said:

Only people allowed to legally use blue lights after October 2011 must be registered on the official "high speed driving" database held by the home office and be able to evidence current blue light driving competences as detailed in the pending ammendments to the road traffic act. Maximum five yearly competence re-assessments must also be evidenced. At this time only police driving instructors can assess or evidence high speed competency. So no private firms can provide the service or gain inclusion to the database.

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Hmmm, I know of at least one agency who will fall foul of the new regs!!

HM Coastguard (Now called the Maritime and Coastguard Agency) do not have adequate training in place to meet this criteria.

What happens now is a new entrant as part of their induction is shown a DVD on how to drive on blues and two's. Thats it!!

They are then allowed to drive the vehicle on a shout, but if anyone in the team feels unsafe with them then they will be given extra training, usually a talk then shown the DVD again!!

What used to happen was individual sector managers would get to know a traffic cop who would attend a training session with the teams in the sector and would impart his/her extensive knowledge on the subject and sometimes even go out with a few designated drivers to give them a few tips and hints.

This wasn't good enough for the head honchos so they brought in a DVD!!!

The way the MCA have got round blue light legislation so far is by telling us all that even when running on blues and twos we MUST obey all traffic laws, this includes stopping at red lights (not stopping then working through carefully ensuring that you don't cause and accident) stopping, turn off B&T's and when on green turn them on again and proceed!

On the original subject of fitting blues to a private car? Various Coastguard Rescue Officers over the years have tried to get away with fitting them especially those that drive 4x4 vehicles as more often than not personal vehicles are needed to attend shouts! On EVERY occasion they have been stopped by the management and told to remove. Interestingly the police have no issue with our personal vehicles having blue strobes to use on shouts, its the MCA management that has the issue!

Similar management logic , an ambulance service that bought fully liveried vehicles fitted with blues and twos marked up First responder , but they are locked off when used by first responders !! Not only that you have to do a driving assesment before you can drive them , which is not required to drive to incidents in your own car ?