Emergency Response driving exemptions
Discussion in the office recently. Not the most interesting, but weirdly a 50/50 divide for and against.
Currently, for emergency driving/response driving/standard driving (whatever your force calls it), we have 3 primary exemptions: speed limits, red lights, and keep left/right signs.
Without doxxing myself, the area I police has recently seen a lot of investment into arterial roads for road safety improvements. Part of these improvements has been the introduction of solid white/double white lines. It now feels like they’ve been painted everywhere, to the point there are sections of completely straight road with visibility for upwards of a mile that are now double solid whites.
We don’t have any exemption for solid whites and have to follow the Highway Code. Traditionally, I never really opposed this, as solid whites were generally placed at high-collision hotspots, blind bends, etc.
But now, with nearly every road seemingly getting a fresh lick of paint, it’s causing significant delays for us. We’re often driving within the NSL but stuck behind vehicles doing 50mph with no legal opportunity to overtake, even where it would clearly be safe to do so. Some of these roads have also been widened as part of the upgrades.
I appreciate some people may say “just wait for the vehicle in front to become stationary,” but that doesn’t always happen, and every driver reacts differently.
The irony is that many of our less arterial roads are twisty country lanes with no lines at all, potholes everywhere, and conditions that feel more like a WRC stage than a public road.
If we’re going to continue seeing the majority of arterial roads updated with solid white lines in the name of road safety, is it time emergency response drivers had a legal exemption for them? And do you think the government would care?
I know a review being conducted into the Road Traffic Act for certain offences, surely now the opportunity to amend our exemptions.