Idiots, Blue Lights & Heavy Trucks

Yesterday was an interesting day, arrived at work at around 2.40am to take a number of trucks out to site, and was met by young Kenny, not very bright but very personable and a good, willing worker who informed me he had done all the truck checks and fuelled them all up from our pumps, and the kettle had boiled so he would make me a coffee while we waited for the other two drivers, and escort vehicles. I knew there was a reason I gave Kenny a chance with us.

Out he came with my coffee and he told me he had filled the trucks water boilers and even put a pint of milk in each fridge and loaded them with tea and coffee for our excursion. He told me the Volvo had used a little oil and he had topped it up, and he had left all the trailer brakes on for safety as the trucks were running to warm them up for us. Two other drivers arrived along with our two escort vehicles, I had the paperwork do off we went, we left at 3am and due to our weights we had to be at our first stop by 6am due to restrictions because we were running from 127 - 102 tonnes each. The day looked good and had a promising start.

Our trip should have taken around 2 1/2 hours normally, 15 minutes less if its quiet which it was, then the day started to go wrong.

We hit the motorway and got up to out 40MPH legal limit, i dropped the cruise on and aldo Adele, all was well.

With Rolling In The Deep blasting out a shout came over the radio from our rear escort vehicle "blue lights, blue lights approaching" and we were all aware something was amiss and kept our eyes on the mirrors in case they were chasing a stolen car or worse. Suddenly a white Audi appeared with blue lights on and dropped in between me as lead truck and our front escort vehicle, I hit the air horns and he moved out to lane two, it was just a plain white Audi, so we carried on.
Once again he pulled in front of me and braked, I put all my lights on and hit the air horns, as he saw me getting closer and closer he pulled onto the hard shoulder, then out in front of me, then into lane two, the radio was now alive and the front escort vehicle dropped back to see what was going on.
In the rear view mirror of the rear escort vehicle was another set of blue lights and the radios were alive, had we got a suicide merchant, car thief, or something else.

Suddenly a marked Police car with blues on came along side me and the passenger began to flag me down from the passenger window, a quick shout on the radio to gear jam and wind them down bought us all to a stop in lane one. The passenger from the marked Police vehicle told us to get on the hard shoulder, I refused as at our weights its ilegal, and i shouted this to him. With this much weight we try to use gearboxes rather than brakes to stop us unless its an emergency.

The driver got out of the marked vehicle and came over to me with a really bad attitude, wrong thing to do with me, and told me he would arrest me if we didn't get the trucks on the hard shoulder, again I refused due to our weight, he then got really stroppy. He told me I had refused to stop for a Police vehicle, I denied this as the white Audi had no markings as a Police vehicle, nor did its occupants have a distinguishable Police uniform on, so they have no right to complain as they have to be distinguishable as Police officers by law to stop a vehicle.

Suddenly all hell broke loose, one tried to get hold of me for no reason and i threw him to the ground, I got back into my cab and dialled 999, I demanded my legal right to have the duty Inspector at the scene within 20 minutes, and explained we had three oversize trucks parked in lane one of a live motorway which is extremely dangerous, even at this time in the morning.
Suddenly it calmed down when they heard me demand my legal rights to have the duty Inspector attend, and he did attend, what I heard next appalled me. The unmarked vehicle claimed he was displaying blue lights on the front of his vehicle, my response was it can be any vehicle as these are available from any DIY store for about a tenner each, and why wasn't he displaying any on the rear, and why wern't they in uniform. To stop a vehicle the Police have to be clearly distinguishable as Police Officers, they were driving a plain car and had no uniforms on, therefore I had no reason to stop as they lacked the authority to stop me. The inspector asked them for the reason they tried to stop me, they claimed for a vehicle check; I went beserk and nearly lost it, stopping a convoy of oversize loads in the dark on a live motorway to do a vehicle check; complaint time.

The duty inspector recorded my complaint and I showed him the camera footage from my truck, he was disgusted at their driving; how do they explain 127 tonnes of Scania embeded in the rear of a Police car?, he asked for this evidence, I refused; my complaint was recorded by him and is duly being investigated, they can't deny anything as all our heavy haul vehicles are fitted with four cameras to record such incidents, a boon in the event of an accident and insurers love them.

It kust shows how the good start to the day can go so wrong, and the next time I hear a Police officer complaining about motorists driving dangerously, I may well show him footage from my truck to show the Police can be as bad.

Yep, just cos they are coppers doesn't mean.... I had a smaller scale event a few years back;

On my way to work at around 06.33 I was OVERTAKEN on a very small roundabout by a Mazda 8, with only one tail light and NO brake lights and a very unusual ORANGE rear number plate covered up with mud.... Because the roundabout was so small, I had 2 choices- sideswipe him or clip the kerb. I chose the latter as likely to cause..well it was instinctive anyway.

I then realized that BEHIND him was a Motorway marked POLICE BMW 5 series. What happened next got me really p****d off - they proceeded to turn left into the industrial estate and vanish ( there's a tea wagon...say no more).

When I made a complaint to the police station, which the Mazda had to have passed, I got a very strange response, basically that the Inspector was not available. Well I made several more calls through the day and stopped at the same Police Station again on the way home. When I finally got to speak to the inspector he was very redfaced and rather sheepish. It turned out that he could not tell me which of the 3 motorway cars had ignored the event, beacuse none of them had filled in the proper logs that morning and according to all of their personal logs NONE of them were in that vacinity at that time!??!This was despite the fact that I told him that the passenger was female with very short blonde hair and looked rather young.

It then transpired that they had been "looking" for that car for several weeks as it was a "ringed" motor, being driven by a "person known to them". So when I asked how that car could pass the station in a 30 limit doing around 50, with a motorway car very close behind, then almost take me off the road at the small roundabout without the police officers in the car noticing this..... he got really embarrassed. I had to let him get on with it in the end as it turned out he had just taken over 2 weeks before and there were serious problems with discipline amongst other things. However, he did keep me informed and there were very soon serveral coppers on suspension and a couple facing charges. It just goes to show that, (while I have a fair amount of respect for the Police), they are no different to the rest of us really!

You make a very good point Assassin, explaining how 127 tonnes of Scania became embedded in the rear of their Police car would have taken a fair bit of paperwork, not to mention embarrassment! Cameras are a boon at times.

As for your case maadmaan, they clearly knew something was wrong from the off, and so it proved.

Assassin's case reminded me of a nice little story that took place a few years back. Remember in the late 1990’s when the British Army started selling off their Alvis Stalwart 6x6 amphibious trucks (they were designed during the Cold War for hauling artillery pieces and ammunition across the Rhine), but the width of them made it nigh on impossible for ordinary civilian licence holders to register them for use on British roads? Well, my mate owned one and regularly ran it on the public highway. How? Well he had a rather special way of getting around the law. While others were finding loopholes by registering them as farm tractors or as plant equipment able to be driven on the highway, he had an altogether novel approach that came to light whilst on an excursion up the River Thames.

The off-road club we were members of were out for a Sunday afternoon jolly quite literally swimming up the Thames near Richmond when a young, green constable on the riverbank (straight out of Hendon Police College by the looks of him and out to make a name for himself), flagged my mate down asking him to stop. My mate ignored him totally, which of course riled him somewhat. Keeping up with us along the bank he kept on waving and shouting for my mate to stop and still the driver ignored him – the cab of a ‘Stally’ is enclosed by the way, and what with the noise of the big diesel engine and the Dowty jets pushing you along, not seeing the copper was very feasible. Of course my mate did see him, as we all did standing in the back (about ten of us), but obviously he just wanted to wind him up a tad!

Anyway, with frustration growing and a lot further along the river my mate finally ‘saw him’, so slowed but did not stop. He shouted back, “Sorry, can’t stop, besides … you don’t have the have the authority to stop me”. With that the cop got really mad, shouting back that he was going to call in the cavalry and get the River Police on the case. “Fair enough”, said my mate, “No problem stopping for them”.

Sure enough, eventually two River Policemen arrived and my mate did as promised and pulled over at a mooring. Conveniently it was a pub we had been heading for anyway, but that’s another story.

Of course also there to great us was the young red-faced constable, by this time sweating profusely on the hot summer’s day and looking extremely annoyed. Obvious he was going to blow a fuse, the River Police Sergeant immediately stepped by saying in a really firm voice - “I’ll deal with this”, much to the annoyance of P.C.Green as it really smacked of a ’put down’. Cue the rest of us in the background all giggling like a bunch of adolescent schoolgirls.

“Did you realise Sir that on this part of the Thames it is tidal, therefore you are contravening river regulations?”

“See!!!” said the young ‘un, “I knew it!!!”

After all the usual ‘Is this your vehicle’ / ‘Where are you going’ type questions, the River Policeman asked, “Can I see documents for the vehicle and your licence please Sir”.

What followed took the wind out of the rookie’s sails (no pun intended), and it has to said all of us present. My mate calmly produced not only 100% legal documents for the Stalwart that saw it registered and insured as a bona fide tug boat, a vessel that of course had every right to sail on stretches of inland waterway with or without tides, he also produced a Tug Boat Licence no less … meaning that he was also legally entitled to sail virtually wherever he wanted inland or on the high seas!

Opps! Next thing is the River Police are having a go at the young copper for wasting their time on a fruitless callout, and why didn’t he establish what type of vessel it was before summoning them?

Priceless, nobody but nobody had seen that one coming! Just goes to show, know the law and not only are you safe from prosecution, but you can have a laugh at the same time. Truly satisfying.

A brilliant escapade and fascinating too! But how did he move it across the land?

Err, don't follow - "how did he move it across the land?" Am I being thick and missing the joke or was that a genuine question???

Tom Mc wrote:

Err, don't follow - "how did he move it across the land?" Am I being thick and missing the joke or was that a genuine question???

Well those vehicles were not designed to "live" in water consantly but you can't drive a tug boat on the road.....

Normally on their six wheels.

We had something similar many moons ago, we converted many demobbed from the military by removing the RR B60 petrols and replacing them with Cummins diesels for the inshore oil industry because they were cheap, and we had permission to test them in the local river, and consent from the local rowing club to use their slipway to enter the river.

We were driving one over a bridge and had a traffic car behind us with blues on, and as we came off the bridge we took an instant left down the side of the river on a private road, then onto the slipway and straight into the river, the Police car followed and just stopped short in a cloud of black tyre somke, no ABS then. As we entered the river we began trundling up to do our testing and we met the Police launch which moored exactly opposite the rowing clubs slipway, he moored alongside us and attached his ropes to our steps. He had seen us testing many of these converted vehicles and knew what we were doing, and told us those in the traffic car were twats and we should all have some fun, so we did.

We took off and ran down his side of the river, where the occupants of the traffic car ran down the bank trying to follow us, and kept shouting and waving, being polite we waved back at them and carried on until we came to a junction where a canal left the river, one wasn't watching and ended up in the canal junction, the other stopped and teetered on the edge. As we saw this we turned round and after the one not falling into the river has recovered his colleague they began chasing us again, so we just kept going up and down with them chasing us. This went on for the best part of an hour. As we passed the Police launch we saw them laughing, and actually had tears in their eyes from laughing at this debarcle, so we pulled alongside the floating pontoons which ran along the river. As we did we heard one shout "open the drivers door and grab his keys", as Tom has already stated, they don't have doors, just portholes on the roof, so he couldn't open the door because there wasn't one. He shouted to his colleaugue "can't see the door handle, you have a go" which his colleague did and obviously coundn,t find it because it had no doors.

We had our fun and as we passes the Police launch for the umpteenth time they beckoned us over and pointed to their mooring and gestured to us to come and have a cup of tea with them, we did, and as we got out of the porthole and climbed down the side of the vehicle the river Police were still laughing, seeing us on the other side of the river, moored at the Police launch mooring site, they got back in their car and had to make a 3 mile trip around the one way system to get to us.

As we sat with our tea and coffee in the river Police's Portacabin office, they arrived at the gate and the intercom went, the Police radio was buzzing with what was happening and several Police had congregated on the bridge watching us, the river Police refused to open the gates and let them in and said it was access only to river Police personnel only, this made them worse.

To cut a long story short the river Police telephoned their control room and informed them we were legitimately there and they called the traffic car away, the crowd of Police on the bridge had fathomed out what was happening and were also in stitches laughing.

Tom

You will find many larger vehicles are fitted with cameras, particularly cranes because they are often wide and need two lanes of a road to turn corners, you always get an idiot in a car trying to squeeze into the space these, and our vehicles leave to turn, basically; one regular crane we use is 90 tonnes, 3M wide, and 20M long and he has limited visibility from the cab as they're mounted very low.

Our regular crane company has an average 3 incidents a week from stupid motorists and fitting the cameras reduces their insurance premiums by around 60% as theres no dispute who causes an accident, particularly when a 800BHP 16 axle (all driven) 90 tonne crane connects with a car, as often the driver won't know he/she's hit a car, particularly a small one. When a solid steel sided crane crushes a car you can guess which vehicle wins.

"kept shouting and waving, being polite we waved back at them"