That’s the message that Strathclyde Police are trying to promote just now… with bumper stickers, livery on cars, and all over the Citrac signs around Glasgow’s M8. Rather ironic recently that I saw a police car on Great Western Road (or Inverquhomery Rd if you want to believe Google Maps and Multimap!) speeding (45mph ish) along at 3am when it finds itself behind a slower vehicle at lights in the outside lane. After following it for some time, gradually getting faster, the police car then apparently considered undertaking it (illegal), but as it approached the second set of lights it swerved back behind this vehicle, stuck on some blue beacons and pulled it to the side of the road, presumably for speeding.

The irony being that the only reason that this car was speeding (as far as I can tell) was that the police car was “2 CLOSE” and the driver felt intimidated by it’s presence. As it’s only choice was to speed up or move into a bus lane to allow the (police) car to pass, it speeded up.

Reminds me of June when I was told “a technique that is commonly used by the police” is to sit close to a vehicle in front to “force it out the way”. When I raised the concern that the stopping distance would surely be inadequate and that if I were to drive like that and the police observed such behaviour they responded with “of course we wouldnt expect you to drive like that. You’re not a police officer” and “our drivers are professionally trained and drive performance cars”.

Oh, and the police car on Great Western Rd was missing a brake light… so it wasn’t road legal either…