Scenic areas in England

On 2009-05-29 01:06:55 -0700, Ron Hunter said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2009-05-28 16:23:59 -0700, Ron Hunter said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2009-05-28 13:36:23 -0700, Ron Hunter said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2009-05-28 00:40:28 -0700, Ron Hunter said:

Savageduck wrote:
On 2009-05-27 16:45:52 -0700, Twibil said:

On May 27, 3:17 pm, Savageduck wrote:
Still, people try it several hundred times in a year. Running from t
he
police is usually a way to just make the bill higher, but people seem
to get a thrill out of it, so away they go.
Yup!
Many of them aren't even capable of handling their vehicle as
illustrated by this morning's news from San Jose, but they run anyway.
Can go either way, though. A now-retired policeman friend of mine
wiped out four patrol cars over the course of his career in our town.
(Note the nice double-entendre there.) Totaled two in non-emegency
traffic collisions and two more in high speed pursuits.

The moral to this story is that you should *never* try to stay up with
a Stingray through a 90 MPH sweeper in your Ford four-door sedan, no
matter *how* good you think you are.
I know of a Sgt. in our department who launched an unmarked Chev
Caprice Pursuit conversion in a "Dukes of Hazzard" scenario, flew about
60 feet, and when he landed snapped the chassis in the middle. That car
just folded up! He never lived it down. He ended up as of all things an
Academy instructor.
Easily the best way of outrunning a 'Vette' is to use that radio to
call in help up the road. A nice spike-strip across the road does
wonders, and if you are lucky, you get to see Chevy's famous exploding
plastic car when the driver loses it.
One of the strange things with spike strips, is the amazing ability of
a great variety of vehicles to run considerable distances on rims. The
good thing about the 'vette in this regard, is those rims are not
steel, and they wear down to the disc rotors pretty quickly. Also very
few of those hit with spike strips actually "lose" it, they sort of
grind to a halt, unless they are truly crazy.

The other thing to consider is, gas in a hot running 8 lunger is a
finite commodity.
True, but you need to keep him in sight...
Not quite as difficult as you believe, nowadays.

Fortunately for the most part, the imagined ability of the 'vette
driver to outrun everything, is dampened by his actual ability to do so.
Sometimes dumb luck will out and he will be able to evade, this is an
unusual outcome regardless of the vehicle driven.
If the vehicle is stolen, or hijacked the felon will abandon it as soon
as he believes he can get away, and that usually leads to capture.
If it is an idiot being chased in his own vehicle, he has already
starred in the current video of the day recorded in the majority of
pursuit vehicles, and we will have a pretty good idea of who owns the
car, or who the owner knows is using the car.

Any pursuit confined to surface streets is limited by the environment
and most performance vehicles do not have an advantage over a trained
driver in one of the current Law Enforcement pursuit cruisers, be it
Crown Vic Interceptor (this is not Grand Pa's crown Vic ), or Charger
PD conversion.

If the chase is on limited access highways or freeways, the key is to
keep the chased vehicle on that freeway and monitor exits and
communication between pursuers and dispatch centers. Let him run we
know where he is and ultimately he will be captured. The thing which
compresses time in this scenario, is the threat the chased driver
presents to the public, which might compel officers to take action to
stop the pursuit as soon as possible.

Then depending on location there is that great Law Enforcement tool,
the helicopter.

Traffic, stress and desperation usually leads to mistakes and capture.

Rural roads may be different, but then the communities are small and
the runner if local will eventually be revealed, or is probably already
locally notorious.


I recall seeing a Vette that missed a curve (running from a deputy
Sheriff in Galveston County, Tx.), and went through a barbed wire
fence. The only part of the car, and driver, that was intact enough
to be recognizable was the engine and transmission, that was sitting
about 150 feet out into a pasture. The rest was spread over more than
1/2 acre. The only time I have seen a worse mess was when a jet fighter
crashed directly into the ground, digging a 30 foot hole, and spreading
itself (and the pilot) over a couple of acres of pasture land. The
managed to pick up about 40 lbs of the pilot in a bag. The Vette was
almost as bad.

This was the worst I have ever experienced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Flight_1771
The hillside was covered in what looked like confetti, there was
nothing vaguely recognizable as human or plane.
That used to be one of my favorite alternate drives to the coast. I
can't do that anymore without revisting the nightmare that disaster was.

The airplane crash happened when I was about 11, but even after
wandering around in the field for a while, and seeing parts of 'organic
matter' all around, and finding it on my shoes later, I never had
nightmares about it. The whole thing was so far from any normal
experience that there was little emotional impact. The 'remains' had
been removed from the car crash site before I got there. Neither site
was on my normal travel routes.

The point of impact was on a hill side just 50-60 ft from the road.
The hill is densely forested with California Live Oaks, and the trees
were draped with all sorts of debris. The initial impression was as if
somebody had poured a load of garbage over the trees. Not pleasant at
all.
--
Regards,
Savageduck

"Chris H" wrote in message
...
In message gvm79t$mnu$1@qmul, whisky-dave whisky-
writes

"Chris H" wrote in message
the UK bans only worked because the Police knew EXACTLY where ALL of the
guns were.

No, they didn;t know where they all were,
Yes they did as ALL *legal* guns were registered by serial number to an
owner with an address and where they kept the guns. You move house you
have to tell the police and get the new storage inspected.

So what was the point of the owner taking the gun to the police ?
Why not let the police go to the gun, less risk of them getting stolen
in transit.

The only guns they did not know about were illegal guns.

Is that how the legality of guns is defined.

Are you suggesting that overall there's some link between the number of
guns
in a society
and the number of people killed by guns ???????

No. I am not. There is a lot more to it than that.

Yes, but not that many people got killed by guns until they became the
weapon of choice.

I agree. It is not the number of guns... some countries have far more
guns as a percentage of population but a much lower gun crime rate. It
is not so much the guns as the culture of the people.

Which is why I don;t want the UK culture to go US where poeple think
they should or need to carry a gun or knife. we're trying to eliminate the
'need' for school kids to carry knives for self defense, yeear ago even 8
year-olds
used to carry pen knives, but they weren;t considered as self defence
weapons.
It seems that the main us of guns in teh US is for self defence.
Obviously I'm excluding the military forces in this.


Though in the culture where guns are used in crime more people tend to
want/get them and use them.

Yes, I'd like to aviod that coming to the UK.

It is still true that most police officers will never fire
their gun except at the pistol range during a normal career.
Seems a waste of time having them then doesn't it.
Why not carry a knife.

For the same reason careful drivers have issuance.
No they have insurance because it is the law. Well in the UK anyway.

True. House insurance then... that is not mandatory.

We have two, buildings and mortar insurance which you have to have in order
to get a mortgage, then there's contents insurance which you don't have to
have.


You never know what
lunatic is just around the corner.
True and I'd prefer suchb a luntic wouldn't have access to a gun.

They do now in the UK
The legal gun owners were not lunatics.
What about the one that had a car accident and it damaged part of his brain
then he went and killed his wife and kid.
You don;t have to be a lunatic to kill with a legal gun but I guess it
helps.

It's not like the police don't kill innocent peolpe with their legal guns
either.

Besides when armed police turn up you
either fight (and usually loose) or talk to them and for most minor
crimes it is stupid to start shooting.
well we tend to only arm our police when a crime involving a firearm might
occur,

That is complete bullocks. There are far more armed police in the UK
than ever before and these guns are now normally carried around the
streets. Not held in Police stations.

Not normally until they use the terrorism card.
Not all police carry guns, and were employing comunity police more and more
who
cetainly won;t ever carry a gun.
A friend a cycle courier was questioned briefly by police with big guns
because he
left his bike against a railings while delivering a parcel in central london


Ie if I get pulled over for speeding shooting my way out is just landing
myself in more trouble.

Speeding off isn't a good idea either,
That is not an absolute.

pretty absolute, unless you can think of a very good reason for ignoring
a policeman telling you to stop the engine and get out of the car.
I've been in the situation 3 times so far.
I'm sure they take the number plate before stopping you, unless perhaps you
can
kill them before they radio in or anyone else see's you, perhaps a sub
machine gun
could be used to 'disperse' the crowd too ;-)

but it happens.

Most people speed to a greater or lesser extent.
I agree it doesn't make it right or safe, but some are OK others I would
trust
even when below the speed limit.


I'd have thought shooting a gun off isn't a good idea in general but it
happens.

Quite often in some cities.
True it happens occasionally near where I live, I doubt they are legal guns
but I'm not sure where if it were a legal gun it's status would changed if
used
in an illegal activity.


But how does that help the person that gets shot, ah yes, it's a bad idea
to
be anywhere near a person with a gun, well at least that makes some sense.

It depends who has the gun. Though the police have shot a fair few wrong
targets.

Ah target sounds like an Americanism when you can forget about people
everything is just a target.
let's Lock 'n' load

whisky-dave wrote:


"Chris H" wrote in message


Yes they did as ALL *legal* guns were registered by serial number to an
owner with an address and where they kept the guns. You move house you
have to tell the police and get the new storage inspected.

So what was the point of the owner taking the gun to the police ?
Why not let the police go to the gun, less risk of them getting stolen
in transit.

Because there were something like 50,000 people involved, the firearms had
to be written down in a book and the owners eventually paid compensation.

While police stations have the resources to manage that sort of thing
specialist 'firearms officers' (not the armed ones, the ones who administer
the firearms licensing system) did not, at that time, have the necessary
time to do the task.

The job is now carried out by uniformed staff who are not full police
officers. My local chap is actually a retired soldier who spend 25 years
as an armourer and knows a great deal more about guns than any policeman I
ever met.


The only guns they did not know about were illegal guns.


Is that how the legality of guns is defined.

More or less, yes...

There are some exceptions, such as antiques, but even some of those require
licenses

--
William Black