Lord Campbell of Croyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by Lord Falconer of Thoroton on 11 July (WA 101), what action they are considering to help reduce the number of accidents involving police cars. [HL5840]
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Falconer of Thoroton)We welcome the recognition by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) that they must work to reduce the number of accidents involving police vehicles.
Measures already in place include a new police driver training course, introduced in December 2000. An essential element of the course is that officers should recognise the need to give priority to public safety above all other considerations such as attending an incident or apprehending a suspect. Where pursuits are concerned, there is a nationally agreed ACPO pursuit code of practice and it is already police policy to consider continuously the consequences of a pursuit and whether to break it off. Operational measures to 92WA avoid pursuits or curtail them include the use of helicopters, the early deployment of tyre deflation devices across the carriageway, and tactical pursuit and containment in which a number of police vehicles box in the target vehicle and bring it safely to a halt.
ACPO are working closely with the Police Complaints Authority to identify why there appears to be an upward trend in police vehicle accidents and how this might be avoided. Useful information can be expected from the increasing use by forces of automatic data recorders (ADR) and vehicle accident data recorders (VADR). The ADR and VADR operate in a similar way to aircraft black boxes, providing data on such issues as speed, gear changes, braking, vehicle performance and the use of blue lights.