Justice 1 Committee, 01 Dec 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 1, 2004

Official Report 193KB pdf

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Emergency Vehicles and the Law

Item 2 is on emergency vehicles and the law. I refer members to the note that has been prepared by the clerks, which sets out the background to the committee's consideration of the issue. Again, I appreciate that this subject has been under consideration for some time. It is the result of at least two petitions about emergency vehicles, particularly involving reported incidents of careless driving. As the committee will know, petition PE111 is closed; however, I invite the committee to consider whether it wishes to take any further action.

The clerks' note refers to the working group on a national standard for response driving. It is not clear to me what that standard might contain, so it would be useful for the committee to have sight of that standard when it is available. If the standard is to be of the quality that I would expect, it should contain provisions for ensuring that people who undertake emergency service driving meet certain criteria in respect of their skills being up to date and having been tested within a reasonable time frame. If it is simply going to set standards for drivers to qualify as emergency drivers, and if their performance is not to be independently assessed and reviewed periodically thereafter, the standard will not be satisfactory.

As members will know, I have an interest in flying. Someone such as myself—a private pilot—must fly with an examiner every two years. There is no known case in recent history of a private pilot killing anybody on the ground. I think that that is perfectly reasonable and excellent, and I never fly with an examiner without learning something to my advantage that raises my performance. By the same token, I expect that because of the special skills that have to be exercised by emergency service vehicle drivers, a similar requirement—I do not prescribe what—should be in the national standard. I would like in due course to see whether it is.

I have only one comment to add. The point has been made before that, when an emergency vehicle is oncoming or approaching from behind—I am sure that we have all witnessed such situations—there is pandemonium because people are not sure what to do. The advice in our papers is that a driver should speed away from an emergency vehicle in order to clear its path. I am not convinced that drivers are generally taught that, although they might be nowadays—I passed my test a long time ago. It has been acknowledged that there should be public information on that, but more could be done to make the public aware of the steps they should take. I have been appalled to witness drivers making no effort to move out of the way of emergency vehicles, and it has occurred to me that it should be a road traffic offence not to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle. That is a slightly different issue from the quality of emergency vehicle driving, which Stewart Stevenson mentioned. I totally support what he said.

However, we are presented with a two-part equation. On one side, we must ensure that drivers who exceed the speed limit for emergency purposes are properly trained, because a police car that is exceeding the speed limit to chase a criminal, or an ambulance that is attending a serious incident, should not knock someone down. On the other side, the public need to be aware how to deal with emergency vehicles. I would like there to be more public information, but I presume that that is a matter for the Department for Transport and not for the Scottish Executive Justice Department.

I have some sympathy on the matter. We must also consider the people who are waiting for the ambulance, the fire engine or the police car to arrive. Society expects the emergency services to break all the rules to get to an incident safely and as quickly as possible, but when something goes wrong—as must inevitably happen—people say that the vehicle should not have jumped a red light or have been travelling at 45mph in a 30mph zone. There is a balance to be struck. Driver training for the emergency services can help, but all drivers know that it is not just about what we do; what other road users do also matters.

"The Highway Code" is good at telling us what to do if our indicators stop working. It explains how to indicate that we are turning left by putting our right hand out of the window. However, when I last read the code I did not notice that it said anything about what to do if an emergency vehicle is approaching. I have seen people dawdling along at 25mph in front of a fire engine, which can be damned hard to stop when it gets up a bit of speed, given its size and the weight of the water in the back. We ask much of our emergency services.

The matter is outwith the scope of the Scottish Parliament, but perhaps should be included in the driving test. I read the response from Fife fire and rescue service, which referred to vehicles

"accelerating out of the path"

of emergency vehicles, but there was a time when people would have been booked for doing that. What are drivers supposed to do if they are sitting at a traffic light? If there is a camera at the traffic lights it will flash and record the number of any car that crosses at red or amber and the driver will be charged. The law is not clear about what drivers who have a red light in front of them and a blue light behind them should do; drivers do not know how they should react. We might not be able to legislate on such matters, but we can improve the information that ordinary drivers receive and perhaps even incorporate such situations into the theory component of the driving test.

"The Highway Code" is gloriously vague and we put emergency drivers in an invidious position. We expect them to do everything they can do to reach incidents quickly, but then come down on their heads like a ton of bricks when something goes wrong. That does not help someone who knows a person who was killed or injured in a collision with an emergency vehicle, but we must be careful in our approach. We should ensure that drivers know what they should do in certain situations, but that is outwith our scope.

The matter is reserved, but training of and public information for drivers are devolved, so it is perfectly within our competence to make recommendations on those matters if we want to do so.

I was thinking of the driving test for drivers such as you or me, which I understand is entirely reserved.

Yes. The driving test is a reserved issue.

What is the situation with regard to the police? The clerks' paper seems to concentrate on the fire brigade. I appreciate that there is a problem about whether ordinary motorists respond properly in getting out of the way of the emergency services. However, there is sometimes a fine line between their driving and the emergency to which they are going. What response did we receive from the police on training and guidelines for the traffic police and others who respond to incidents? More than once, I have seen the police driving in what was, to be frank, a reckless manner. To justify driving in that way, they would have to be sure that the emergency merited it.

To clarify, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland advises us that

"in April 2003 all Scottish police forces adopted the ACPOS Police Driver Training Programme to ensure common practice. The programme is accredited by the Driving Standards Agency. All operational police officers undertake a standard driving course to equip them to drive police vehicles under operational conditions, including emergency response situations. Participants have to pass a written examination and undertake a final driving assessment."

That response tells us that police forces already provide training.

Do we have an on-going tally of traffic incidents involving the police?

No. As a result of petition PE111, the media referred to a couple of such incidents, but we do not have statistics on injuries or fatalities that result from incidents that involve emergency vehicles.

I have a nagging doubt that the issue is not being highlighted enough. With the police's rights come responsibilities. That should be underlined and I would like the committee to do so.

I am willing to be corrected but, if I recall correctly, police driver training qualifies people at three different levels—classes 1 to 3—depending on the job that they are expected to do. It might be useful to ask the police, or some other body, to provide statistics on the safety records of the different categories of police drivers. Although I am sure that what the police have told us is perfectly correct, it may slightly overstate the qualifications that the most basic of the police driver courses provides. The most highly qualified police drivers are in an entirely different league from those who have passed the basic test to drive a panda car. It would be useful to see whether there is a correlation, which might provide us with an insight into the issues.

I am a little concerned about Margaret Mitchell's assertion that the police drive recklessly. Given that we do not know about the situation to which the police are responding, we need to be careful. I am less concerned about that than I am about the general public's driving in reaction to the approach of blue-light emergency service vehicles. I acknowledge that driving tests and training are reserved issues, but we could assist with provision of information on how people should respond, or perhaps make a recommendation on that issue. People are uncertain about how they should respond. The letter from Fife fire and rescue service suggests that people should speed up to get away from slow-moving vehicles, but I am not sure that that helps to clarify what people should do. Perhaps the committee can do something to add to people's knowledge of how to respond in such circumstances.

The committee can ask for more information, whether on the police safety record or on training of officers. In addition, we could make a recommendation on training and public information, which are devolved issues. Any other matter would be reserved.

Is there a mechanism through which we can make representation to the British Government on the driving test to ask whether it will consider the matter?

I suppose that it would be open to the committee to do that. My feeling is that if we do anything, we should recommend to the relevant department that there be more public information, such as advertisements on television about how to deal with emergency vehicles. I do not suppose that there would be anything wrong with our simply suggesting that the Scottish Executive offer that input to whoever is responsible for driving tests at the Department for Transport. We will just be commenting; we realise that we have no authority in the matter, so we could make recommendations related to the points that Mary Mulligan made.

On Margaret Mitchell's points, it is a question of asking the police for more information—there would be nothing wrong with our doing that. I say only that the issue has been on-going for some time; we have been corresponding with the police and fire services for several years now, so we need to be sure that we will get something useful out of a further round of correspondence. I am quite open-minded about that, because I think that the subject is important.

Our asking for the statistics would help to remind the police that we take the issue seriously and that they must also be vigilant about reminding people of the various types of training that they receive.

Is not it the case that all police forces record all such incidents anyway? My understanding is that such records are kept for all emergency services, although I do not know for how long. If someone has an accident and prangs their car or fire engine, they are called to account for it.

I assume, in that case, that the committee wants to get some more information, whether from the Scottish Parliament information centre or from police organisations. We shall make some recommendations and comment indirectly that it might be an idea to include responding to emergency vehicles as an item in the driving test. There is also Stewart Stevenson's suggestion in relation to the work that is currently being undertaken by the Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland, which has a working group to review the national standard for response driving to ensure that it fully reflects the needs of the competency approach to driving and the integrated personal development system. Is that what you wanted to pursue, Stewart?

It is not clear to me from the wording of the clerks' note—perhaps they can illuminate it—whether such a national standard exists and is being reviewed or whether it is being created. If it exists, I can obviously go and get a copy and have a look at it. If, on the other hand, it is—[Interruption.] I am getting some sotto voce advice and am being told that the document exists. It would be useful to get a copy of that and at least to look at it. That is all that I suggest at the moment, because I have some views as to what should be in the standard.

We have established that there is a national standard, but what you would like to examine further is whether there is a need to review those standards.

That is right.

Part of the difficulty is that we are writing to the police organisations and the fire services. It would be easier if we could address our letter to just one source. I know that there are obviously differences between the services, but we are concerned in each case with the same issue of national standards in driving.

It is not clear to me whether the national standard is a Scottish document or a Westminster-based document that applies to the UK as a whole. Either way, I am interested in it. I do not see any reason why it would not be a UK-wide document, to be honest.

I think that we will have to write to the ambulance service as well as to the fire service and the police. We could address our letter to the Scottish Executive, but I presume that it would just refer us to the three services.

It is agreed that we will pursue the question on public information, and the driving test issue. We will also seek more information on national standards for driving in the three services.