A sad tale from the coroner’s court, with a backstory of communication failures, cost-cutting and stupidity
To me that’s a pretty cut and dry case of corporate manslaughter. Although by keeping the guidlines and policies really obscure and ambiguous gives them the usual copout of…
Cumbria Police said the force had taken “all reasonable and proportionate steps given the information available at the time”.
And of course the old favourite of restricting the investigation scope so “not in my remit mate” can be used…
Both the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the Health and Safety Executive said PC Dumphreys’ case was outside their remit.
None of these, or other fires, were mentioned by Lancashire Police in the report it submitted to PC Dumphreys’ inquest in September 2022 after being tasked by Cumbria Police with investigating what happened
Asked why, the force said “anything other than that collision” was not part of its remit.
Cunts.
Money > Lives
Also - how many ex-fleet cars are now in private hands?
I hope some decent ambulance chasers are on to this, or it’ll keep happening.
Muh “Legendary German reliability” tho’…
Tests showed engine oil was being degraded by high levels of idling - sitting, parked, with the engine running.
Police cars were idling for 50% of the time, compared with 30% in civilian cars.
Begs the question of why the police routinely break the law concerning vehicle idling:
Vehicle idling is an offence against the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) (Fixed Penalty) (England) Regulations 2002. The law states that is an offence to idle your engine unnecessarily when stationary. If you fail to turn your engine off after being spoken to you may be issued with a fixed penalty notice.
The legislation covers all vehicles on public roads including buses, taxis and private cars. It does NOT apply to vehicles moving slowly due to road works or congestion; vehicles stopped at traffic lights; vehicles under test or repair; or defrosting a windscreen.
The following suggests that police forces abroad can function without continually idling their vehicles:
BMW insists it “acted responsibly in responding to this unique technical issue”. It had never seen the fault occur in civilian cars, or in police vehicles outside the UK, it said.
I suspect the idea is that having oil at running temperatures enables them to apply high outputs from standing in a way better rather than from cold.
More to the point, why are they sat on their arses doing nothing for 50% of the time.
They should be out there catching real criminals rather than picking on motorists.
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Another ticket?! 
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Among many other things that stad out as questionable, the (informal) recommendation to increase oil change intervals appears to have been disregarded on the grounds of cost…
Cunts.
Yep. Got to wonder how much else is hidden behind the no-commenting and questionably-legal evasiveness…