Chrisreyn

yea, i used to love guys that do that....I'd hear a trooper or ambulance get a call and go set on the highway to catch the guys pacing them..
Everytime you run "hot" you are placing your life and everyone elses in some jeopardy.. having someone decide it means the law dont apply to them just adds to it..

If they admitted to pacing the trooper, they went to jail for reckless endangerment.. one felony charge for every vehicle within a mile of them.. and I NEVER LOST ONE OF THOSE CASES..... figure $1000 per charge. well, if you come thru Kansas, you decide if its worth it... no better than chasing a fire truck or ambulance for thrills...


As to troopers and local LEO's running without lights/ sirens,well theres this thing called the Doppler effect..
basically a police car with the siren going is running in a bubble of sound.. you could draw a car on paper an make a circle around it. That circle represents where the sound can be heard... at a stand still teh car is centered in teh bubble, but at 60mph, the cars front bumper is almost even with the leading edge of the bubble. At around 75-80, the leading edge of teh sound bubble is at the patrol cars rear bumper..What this means is that by the time you hear the siren , the patrol car is passing you.
I have seen at least a dozen wrecks caused by people being startled so badly by teh "all the sudden" appearance of that car and no soooner than they see it and they hear teh siren, they over-react, sometimes swerving right into the patrol car, most often to teh other side,and whatever happens to be there a teh moment...
At high enough speeds the siren becomes more of a danger than an aid.... and many times I have run at speed to get to a position on teh highway to be prepared to intercept a chase that MAY come that way, or to look for a vehicle seen leaving the scene of a robbery or homicide orrape that was heading in that direction...and people dont know that, they just see you wizz by them and then pull over and sit..

And I know some of teh Troopers here have a "patrol area" of several hundred miles..... heck, on the Sheriffs Office here, my normal area( one officer per area mind you) was a 25X 38 mile area, included 4 small towns without city departments... If I was at the NW corner of my territory and got a prowler call at the SE edge, driving the speed limits could mean a 45 -60 minute response time... now , lets imagine thats YOUR 15 year old daughter home by herself reporting the prowler..how fast do YOU want me there????
so dont be so quick to jump to conclusions..... you dont know whats going on in that car, and you ought be thankfull they are there doing that job....


Don, in KS an emergency vehicle is defined by statute as having a siren in operation.. lights arent required but the siren is.....

rustyshakelford

you made some good points^^. alot of times if you use lights and sirens on the highway people are more likely to do something stupid when they see and you it startles them. alot of dept, have made it a SOP to turn off warning devices on the highway also! when going 70 mph down the highway, you almost have to be right on top of someone for them to hear you...most look into their mirror, see us, freak out and make a sudden lane change

brett

Chrisreyn

and thats the proper way to handle it! Tho it would be better to use the administrative number rather than 911 if you have it.

Lary Ellis (Top)

I agree with Chris...

No way can you know what the Officer is actually doing, so taking offense to something you just "think" is happening, is pretty durn silly. There are many reaons why an LE might need to get from point A to point B in a hurry and never use his lights or siren.

Spend your efforts worrying about your driving and leave the troopers to do their thing as they need to.

Sidewinder

An interesting theory but as the speed of sound is (according to Wikipedia):

At sea level, at a temperature of 21 °C (70 °F) and under normal atmospheric conditions, the speed of sound is 344 m/s (1238 km/h, or 769 mph, or 1128 ft/s or 661.5 kt).

I think you need to be going a little faster that 80 MPH to be hidden in the "bubble" of sound. If we assume the speed of sound is 769 MPH and you subtract 80 from that for the speed of the car, the sound will still be travelling 689 MPH faster that than the car. You should be able to hear this a little bit before the car is close to you. Not trying to start an argument it's just that I don't see that as being a valid excuse. If emergency vehicles are speeding they should have their lights and/or sirens on.

mikmaze

sorry Larry, but I tend to feel it is important for them to run their lights , to warn motorist of an approaching, high speed car in an otherwise normal flow of traffic, could be the difference between life and death, to err on the side of caution could save my life, or even your own. And seeing how the hammer always fairs better than the nail, its the little guy that gets it worse. Even recently when in NJ they were speeding taking our govenor to a meeting when he had a near fatal accident, entirely due to speed and no lights on a busy public highway. this is edging towards a pollitical discussion, as hard as we try to keep it from becoming one, it all boils down to it.

LOGAN

i hate state patrol and most city cops, there is probably 2 or 3 sheriffs i like in the whole county, the rest i hate. response time sucks after 7 pm, if something happens you might as well drive in 15 miles and report it, it takes a sheriff over 2 hours to respond. i can drive from one side of the county to the other in less than a hour at normal speed. i had guns stolen 1 time, i had some of my moms jewelry stolen another, and ive had people shoot at the house from the road trying to poach deer. they told me too bad about the guns, they refused to prosecute for the jewelry and the girl had prior thefts on her record, and they told me if someone shoots at my house from the road it is my problem not theirs and if someone gets hit in my house i had to deal with it, and if i shot back, I WOULD BE ARRESTED, then they get ****** when i run illegal armed people off my property with my gun. city cops refuse to do anything about vandalism on vehicles, $2900 worth, they gave me a speeding ticket in bumper to bumper traffic, harassed my older brother for setting in the bed of his truck with no tailgate but let the guys standing on a flatbed with no sides stay there several nites in town, let a kid off for shooting another kid in the face and killing him, same kid that wrote a bomb threat at school and nothing happened either time, pulled me over cause he heard me speeding, wrote me a ticket and never seen me break the law cause he went on "hear say" another time, and they wrote me a ticket cause a woman side swiped me in a parking lot on private property, but they sure dont have a problem letting people stand on the church steps next to the school and deal drugs. we've had so many cops and judges here lately be busted for bribes and illegal stuff it isnt funny. all of those things i listed were seperate incidents by the way. personally if a officer is speeding you should be able to make a citizens arrest on him cause he is doing something that could possibly kill someone. i drive the interstate about 300 miles a week and see them fly down the road as fast as they can whip into a crossing and bust someone for speed.

Totallyrad

All those numbers are nice but, a few things are not taken into account. Due to OSHA, siren speakers cannot be mounted in the location that best suits their performance. They usually end up behind the grill somewhere, pointed at the ground instead of facing forward, in open air where they work the best. This, along with the smaller speaker needed to get behind the grill and a smaller, cheaper driver reduces the volume again. On top of this, add in a loud radio, loud exhaust, 12 valve engine(cough, cough), cell phone or even just the conversation going on inside the average car on the road and many times you won't even know an emergency vehicle is there until they're within 100 feet of you. At 70 mph that's a big surprise.
I personally found it difficult to catch all my bad guys by running my lights and siren every time I was sent on a call. Believe it or not, stealth is important.

jthorpe

Just got off work. I did the speed limit all the way home. I'll have to pop a top and watch this thread for a while.

Unit44

Umm.... could you factor in the speeds of a vehicle traveling the same direction as you (@ a different speed...) dba of sound absorption level of that vehicle (windows up/down?), dba level of siren, ambient operational noise of vehicle in (exhaust, tires, wind) volume level of radio, TALKING ON CELL PHONE! I would really like to see the math on that as I have experienced and been a part of the "bubble" since I run "code" every once in a while.... also when two or more cars are running code response they should always run different siren tones so citizens know there are more going through a intersection, in a perfect world that followed Wikipedia's rules for sound this would not be necessary.

annabelle

I just mind my own business and drive my usual 1800 RPM for fuel savings. I figure that risking your life on the job shold cut you some slack. Not that they didn't chose the profession, but are they harming you?

Proud Rebel

Well in Baton Rouge, La. the sheriffs office would rather give tickets to people who park in their front yards rather than go after the drug dealers and thieves in our neighborhood. I know I got a $50 fine for parking my truck off to the side of my drive way so I could use my wifes car if she needed to go back to the hospital. She just had surgery the day before, but the deputy just said," Sorry", and had me sign the ticket. I said see you in court on your day off. And it's all because of this religous group in our neighborhood who thinks they are going to clean up the area, they call the cops and complain. Can someone please explain to me how can a $37K truck be urban blight???HEY NUT *****, GOD SAYS GET A BRAIN AND GO AFTER THE THIEVES AND DRUGGIES!!!!! Morons, whew! Sorry for the rant

Unit44

I really think the way to end these complaints (rants?) on the forums (and everywhere else) would be for every citizen to be a police officer for 30 days..... I know there are a few bad apples (as with any line of work) but 99% are some of the best people you will ever meet and do anything they can to help a stranger out.

Lary Ellis (Top)

It would not help, as you can see so plainly evident in many of the rants here it is becoming far too common in this country to blame everything on anybody but yourself.

No one takes responsibility for their own actions, as evidenced by the silly rants posted above stating the tickets they got were all the Officers fault at times I am embarrassed by the lack of integrity and responsibility so many of our members show, and yet they expect everyone else around them to have higher integrity than themselves.

Fronty Owner

One day going home, I had a county cop blow past me while I was in his county, he crossed over into the county I live in (in another state), I passed him back and stayed in front of him until the road changed to a two lane. Then I drove 5 to 10 under the speed limit. I hope that really upset the cop.