Just familiarising myself…

February 1, 2006 on 2:11 pm | In News | No Comments

I read a while back about a copper who had been driving an unmarked police car without sirens or flashing lights at 159MPH on the M54 motorway and 91MPH in a 30MPH area – not chasing a criminal or getting to the scene of an accident but while he was familiarising himself with a new vehicle and “honing his driving skills”. The case went to court and PC Milton was acquitted on the basis his driving wasn’t dangerous!

Surely if you are familiarising yourself with something or are honing your skills at something means that you are unfamiliar with the thing in question or you believe your skills need to be honed – in which case you shouldn’t be practicing on a public road. If anything were to go wrong at 159MPH, then doing so on a public road would have a significant element of needless risk which could only be described as dangerous driving. At the very least he should have had his lights on just so the public doesn’t think that the average person is flying around at over twice or three times the speed limit.

So today, I was please to read on the BBC News website that PC Milton’s acquittal has been overturned by the High Court and that the case would be tried again. Hopefully this time the court will decide that egregious acts of endangering the public safety cannot be carried out whenever a copper fancies honing his skills. Afterall by that logic, you should be on the lookout when police marksmen decide to failiarise themselves with their new sniper rifles!