Garda Car driving in wrong direction in fast lane?!?

Solair

I was driving down the Cork South Link Road on Saturday at about 10:20am and there was a lady pulled into the centre margin on the fast lane facing the wrong direction.

She had clearly entered the wrong side of the dual carriageway at the Sarsfield Road Roundabout and had made her way about 1km up the road before pulling into the centre margin.

This is the bit that absolutely terrified me. I was suddenly faced HEAD ON with a Garda car driving towards me in the fast lane in the wrong direction at considerable speed with their lights flashing.

I initially thought that the car was moving away from me then suddenly realised YEIKS he's driving the wrong direction and swirved out of the lane. The car skidded slightly when I moved out of lane very sharply, but thankfully didn't go too much out of control.

A second garda car followed about 1 minute later again, in the wrong direction.

Personally, I thought their behaviour was putting the public in serious risk. They should have entered the road from the airport roundabout, only a few hundred meters in the other direction, stopped traffic in the fast lane i.e. by putting their flashing lights on and closing the lane and then got the car out of the system.

I was horrified at the way they just drove down the fast lane like that in the wrong direction. It seemed completely irresponsible, even if they were trying to get to the car that was blocking the lane. The could have caused a far worse situation.

Do Gardai have any training at all on how to manage traffic and how to be have on a motorway or dual carriageway?

If that road had even been slightly busier, there was a serious risk that their driving could have killed someone.
:eek:

BrianD

Perhaps a member of the Gardai might enlighten us to what level of training their members get in the tactical use of vehicles. It would be my view is that Gardai use cars just to get around. You never get the impression that their is an active use of vehicles for a patrolling regime or there is a co-ordinated use of vehicles.

What you are saying happened in Cork sounds like a complete lack of training. The Gardai should have gone down the other carriageway and crossed over at the next juction and approached the car in question in the normal direction of travel. The kind of manoeuver the did should only be used in the pursuit of a dangerous criminal.

Solair

It's not even like it's a difficult to access spot. She was roughly half-way between the Kinsale Road Roundabout and the Sarsfield road roundabout - It would have taken them maybe 2 or 3 minutes more to reach her in the correct direction.

There's also a slipway entrance from Togher which is where the main garda station for that area is.

The incident took place about 1km from the wilton roundabout there

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=togher+cork&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.410182,65.302734&ie=UTF8&ll=51.875405,-8.49123&spn=0.013486,0.031886&z=15&iwloc=addr

(Map above)

You can see it's hardly inaccessible!!

The 'criminal' was hardly dangerous - she looked like a terrified little old lady who had turned on to the wrong side of the road at the Wilton Roundabout.

Even if she was a dangerous criminal, putting people in that kind of danger would really want to be justified i.e. she'd need to be carrying weapons and intending to use them, carrying a hostage or a bomb or something.

Otherwise, I don't understand how a 1km diversion to enter the road from the other direction couldn't have been done. Surely there were some garda cars who could have come in from the Kinsale road roundabout.

Cork City's main garda station is only a few minutes down the south link from there (in the correct direction).
I don't understand what they were up to or why.

It's just reckless.


Surely the correct procedure would have been to enter the road in the correct direction and close off the fast lane i.e. normal accident procedures .... Garda vechicles with flashing could have very quickly closed the entire fast lane from 1km back i.e. at the kinsale road roundabout.

Then simply used a few more vechicles stopped with flashing lights along the lane (3 cars max needed)

turn the lady around -- and take her off the road and back to Wilton --- then discuss the situation with her!

antoinolachtnai

As I understand it, there is special training to drive a garda car, but there is a waiting list. Garda are allowed drive on their own driver's licence with special permission.

I do not know anything about the training.

Driving outside the rules of the road, even if it is justified and required by the circumstances, obviously has the potential to be extremely dangerous.

marmurr1916

I'm not surprised by this at all. In my experience many Garda drivers, even Traffic Corps ones, are a bunch of dangerous idiots.

I recently saw a Garda Traffic Corps motorbike driving illegally on the hard shoulder of a motorway to avoid traffic congestion.

There was clearly no emergency as the bike's blue lights and siren were off.

Just an impatient Garda biker using the hard shoulder illegally to avoid a traffic jam when, as a member of the Traffic Corps, he should have been setting an example.

AugustusMaximus

Gardai don't care.

I dunno how many times I've seen them speed (10mph over the limit, not emergency speeding), not using indicators etc etc.

And of course, they'll get away with it. I find it very interesting when its the Traffic Corps Taliban at it.

Solair

They absolutely need training - It's very dangerous, both for the public and the gardai themselves if they are not capable of handing a chase / road incident properly.

From an employer point of view, the Gardai are endangering their own officers by not providing proper training and from a public safety point of view it's creating unacceptable risks on the road for no good reason.

If they're not prepared to solve this in-house the Road Safety Authority ought to become involved and push for legislation.

browner85

You should of reported them to the ombudsman!!!

Solair

I was considering it. Not sure it'd get me anywhere though. A call to Joe Duffy might have more impact.

TriciaDelicia

Indeed

dh0661

browner85 wrote: »

You should of reported them to the ombudsman!!!

I doubt that OP has details of reg. # etc, without any details there is no point contacting the ombudsman.

Solair

Unfortunately, when you're driving at near 100km/h and a car drives towards you getting the registration is the last thing that enters your mind. I was actually on my way to work and running quite late so I didn't have time to go back and drive down the other carriage way and get numbers.

I do intend to ring the road safety authority on monday though and my local TDs.

Amtmann

If I were you I would contact a local Cork paper or 96FM about the incident. A statement needs to be made about this in my opinion.

donvito99

Solair wrote: »

I was driving down the Cork South Link Road on Saturday at about 10:20am and there was a lady pulled into the centre margin on the fast lane facing the wrong direction.

She had clearly entered the wrong side of the dual carriageway at the Sarsfield Road Roundabout and had made her way about 1km up the road before pulling into the centre margin.

This is the bit that absolutely terrified me. I was suddenly faced HEAD ON with a Garda car driving towards me in the fast lane in the wrong direction at considerable speed with their lights flashing.

I initially thought that the car was moving away from me then suddenly realised YEIKS he's driving the wrong direction and swirved out of the lane. The car skidded slightly when I moved out of lane very sharply, but thankfully didn't go too much out of control.

A second garda car followed about 1 minute later again, in the wrong direction.

Personally, I thought their behaviour was putting the public in serious risk. They should have entered the road from the airport roundabout, only a few hundred meters in the other direction, stopped traffic in the fast lane i.e. by putting their flashing lights on and closing the lane and then got the car out of the system.

I was horrified at the way they just drove down the fast lane like that in the wrong direction. It seemed completely irresponsible, even if they were trying to get to the car that was blocking the lane. The could have caused a far worse situation.

Do Gardai have any training at all on how to manage traffic and how to be have on a motorway or dual carriageway?

If that road had even been slightly busier, there was a serious risk that their driving could have killed someone.
:eek:

Emergency Services Forum, plenty of guards, Traffic and Community will be able to help you out.

And just to try and clarify one point it is only on rare occasions that gardai without a standard or advanced drivin course get to drive marked or un marked vehicles with blues and twos.

thebman

I've been overtaken twice on the way home to Tullamore by garda cars that were leaving me like I was still.

Again no sirens and this is at night and they just plow ahead.

Some of them have no regard for the safety of the public and shouldn't be allowed drive any car if they think its safe for them to do these speeds on public roads when not responding to an incident.

corktina

i got passed by a Gard on a motorbike escorting an ambulance on the south ring who hit my mirror with his hand whislt trying to get traffic to pull over...i was doing 100k at the time....he didnt look to me to be in control....

Tango Alpha 51

Trust me that motocycle member in question was perfectly in control. You'd be surprised how little notice people take of us or the gardai when we're responding to an emergency. In relation to the orginal posters thread, es vehicles are exempt from many rules of the road when responding to emergency calls etc & this includes driving contra flow against traffic even on a motorway.

For arguements sake here, what do you think would have happened if a MOP not paying any attention had hit the woman who was stranded whilst the gardai were going the extra 2-3mins around to get to her.??

livvy

brim4brim wrote: »

I've been overtaken twice on the way home to Tullamore by garda cars that were leaving me like I was still.

Again no sirens and this is at night and they just plow ahead.

Lets hope you never need an emergency vehicle to assist you - plowing ahead to give you a dig out when you need it. Its only when you have relied on someone getting to you quickly that you appreciate it.

AugustusMaximus

livvy wrote: »

Lets hope you never need an emergency vehicle to assist you - plowing ahead to give you a dig out when you need it. Its only when you have relied on someone getting to you quickly that you appreciate it.

I think the obvious point he was making is that the Garda was not using sirens or flashing lights.

Complete madness if they don't. Just an accident in the waiting.

AugustusMaximus

buzzman wrote: »

For arguements sake here, what do you think would have happened if a MOP not paying any attention had hit the woman who was stranded whilst the gardai were going the extra 2-3mins around to get to her.??

And what would have happened if that Garda car had caused a head on collision with both cars doing 100kph.

It would only take one stupid driver in this instance to not notice the Garda car approaching contra traffic flow.

Alun

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

And what would have happened if that Garda car had caused a head on collision with both cars doing 100kph.

It would only take one stupid driver in this instance to not notice the Garda car approaching contra traffic flow.

Exactly, they may be exempt from traffic laws, but they're not exempt from the laws of physics ... none of us are. It's a bloody stupid thing to do regardless of who you are, full stop.

Buffman

AugustusMaximus wrote: »

I think the obvious point he was making is that the Garda was not using sirens or flashing lights.

Complete madness if they don't. Just an accident in the waiting.

Old thread, but the OP says they did have emergency lights on.
There are loads of situations where ES vehicles will have to do this, thats the idea of flashing high beam headlights aswell as the blues. The OP was driving too fast for the road conditions if he/she could not react in time.

If you were trapped in an overturned car which was on fire, would you prefer the ES continued to the next exit? Seconds can make the difference.

And remember, it's the overtaking lane, not the fast lane. With all these crazy drivers going the wrong way, the left lane is the best place to be.

By far the main problem is some people cannot react properly to emergency vehicles.

parsi

This seems to be common all over the place.

I regularly watch Austrian radio on the TV (go figure) and quite a few times they have had traffic bulletins about "geisterfahrer" * - guys going wrong way on motorway/dual carriageway.


* not to be confused with scharwzfahrer who are folk who don't pay their fare, I wonder would people who don't pay tools and drive on the wrong side be called geisterschwarzfahrer ?

corktina

buzzman wrote: »

Trust me that motocycle member in question was perfectly in control. You'd be surprised how little notice people take of us or the gardai when we're responding to an emergency. In relation to the orginal posters thread, es vehicles are exempt from many rules of the road when responding to emergency calls etc & this includes driving contra flow against traffic even on a motorway.

.??

you werent there bud...my guy was panicing badly and all over the place...(.i wouldnt be AT ALL surprised seeing as my wife is a Paramedic....)
ES drivers are only exempt if they get away with it...that guy would have been in deep do-dos if he had hit someone.

Solair

I was most certainly not driving at an inappropriate speed for the conditions on the road. Unfortunately if you're doing 100km/h and a Garda car approaches in the wrong direction at 100km/h, you don't have very long to react flashing lights or no flashing lights. People swerved. It could have been messy if someone had swerved too hard.

What annoyed me about this situation is that they were NOT responding to an urgent situation, a lady had entered the road the wrong way and was stranded on the centre margin. I cannot see how they could not have entered the road in the correct direction as there were plenty of access ways to the road, it's not like it's a long distance motorway with miles between exits.

If they had been responding to a life/death situation, fair enough. The worrying aspect of this situation was that they weren't. Rather, they opted to drive the wrong way down a busy dual carriage way to respond to a relatively non-urgent situation when they had the option of not putting the public at risk and entering the road in the correct direction. This is a short stretch of dual carriageway and the lady was stuck equidistant between two junctions.

I've seen quite a few incidents where Gardaí have been driving completely inappropriately on the roads. I'm not saying for a moment that they were deliberately putting the public at risk, what I am saying is that it looks like they do not have appropriate training for dealing with motorway / dual carriage way traffic situations.

The Gardai and other emergency vehicles may well have rights to ignore traffic laws when en route to an incident, but they need to ensure that they do this in the safest possible way.

Lack of proper training puts the public and the Gardai at serious risk. Frankly, I'm surprised the GRA isn't pushing hard to make sure that everyone is getting appropriate training as I am sure that there are Gardai being injured and killed on the roads for no good reason.

Mr. Presentable

To be completely fair to the gardai - you don't know what they were responding to. You think you do. Also, you have no business driving in the "overtaking lane" just so you can go "fast".

Now I don't know whether you were overtaking or not, but it reads like you were "driving" in the overtaking lane. If there is an emergency vehicle coming towards you with its signals on you should have no trouble getting out of the way if driving according to the conditions. But you had to "swerve"?

Imagine, if you will, your family and friends are all in a burning vehicle and the quickest way for the emergency services...well, you know where I'm going with this. Perhaps the old lady phoned the guards herself because she suffered sudden blindness.

Mental Mickey

nipplenuts wrote: »

To be completely fair to the gardai - you don't know what they were responding to. You think you do. Also, you have no business driving in the "overtaking lane" just so you can go "fast".

Now I don't know whether you were overtaking or not, but it reads like you were "driving" in the overtaking lane. If there is an emergency vehicle coming towards you with its signals on you should have no trouble getting out of the way if driving according to the conditions. But you had to "swerve"?

Imagine, if you will, your family and friends are all in a burning vehicle and the quickest way for the emergency services...well, you know where I'm going with this. Perhaps the old lady phoned the guards herself because she suffered sudden blindness.

Great reply.

Solair

1) I wasn't driving in the overtaking lane, I was overtaking in the overtaking lane. Traffic in lane 1 was moving rather slowly due to a tractor pulling construction machinery on the road (another wonderful Irish oddity)

2) You have no idea what they were responding to either.

I've lived in the UK, the US and France and I can assure you that the standard of Garda driving is worrying. I've seen quite a few incidents on motorway/dual carriage way where they clearly didn't have a clue what they were doing. They were doing their best, but clearly lacked the kind of training required to manage the situation in the safest possible way.

Buffman

Solair wrote: »

If they had been responding to a life/death situation, fair enough. The worrying aspect of this situation was that they weren't. Rather, they opted to drive the wrong way down a busy dual carriage way to respond to a relatively non-urgent situation

From the information they may have recieved they may have taught it was a life/death situation. The initial call was probably while she was driving the wrong way and not pulled into the side. No guard wants to do something that dangeours for something superficial.

Solair wrote: »

1)
I've lived in the UK, the US and France and I can assure you that the standard of Garda driving is worrying. I've seen quite a few incidents on motorway/dual carriage way where they clearly didn't have a clue what they were doing. They were doing their best, but clearly lacked the kind of training required to manage the situation in the safest possible way.

Those countries have a LOT more dedicated traffic police/highway patrol units than we do, even in per capita terms. The Traffic Corps are trained to high standards, but training does need to be improved with local patrol units, many of which end up dealing with road related emergency's when no traffic corp unit is available. Some are still being driven on 'Chiefs' permission, where the chief super will give permission for a garda to drive without the advanced training. This is due to a backlog for this training.
So yes, you're right, training can be an issue sometimes.

KevR

I had a near miss with a Garda car on the Quincentenary Bridge (2+2 single carriageway) in Galway a couple of months back. It was rush hour and traffic was very heavy but still fast moving. I was in the right hand lane with a big truck in front of me so I didn't have any view of what was going on up ahead in my lane. The truck swerved into the left hand lane without warning and I was left facing a Garda car only metres away speeding towards me. Thank god there was just enough space for me to squeeze into the left lane in time to avoid a collision. Could have easily had a head on with the Garda car or smashed into a car on the left hand lane in a bid to avoid the Gardai.

Another time I saw a Garda car use the footpath on the same bridge in Galway, also at rush hour. I know I wouldn't have liked to have been walking along with headphones in with my back to the Gardai who were speeding up behind me - sirens or no sirens. I have no idea what they were responding to and to be honest I don't care very much. They simply shouldn't have done this. I know it's always bumper-to-bumper in all 4 lanes at rush hour but ambulances regularly use this road (it's near UCHG) during busy times and cars pull in to make the space to let them pass..

monument

Driving skills of gardaí criticised in road policing report

THOUSANDS OF gardaí who are not properly trained to drive patrol cars are causing a “serious safety issue”, the Garda Inspectorate said yesterday.

The inspectorate noted in a review of roads policing that about 2,600 gardaí were driving Garda cars on “chief’s permission”. This is a situation where senior gardaí allow untrained officers to drive patrol cars because of a shortage of fully trained members.

“This is a serious safety issue for police officers and the public. It must be addressed urgently,” the report states. It said the issue was also highlighted in a report last year.

- The Irish Times

I know a guy who was related to the man killed by a Garda car about a year ago now... you'd think they'd change a bit after that, but from what I see all too regularly in Dublin City Centre, I'm surprised they haven't yet killed more people.

Some of the more notable things I've seen include a Garda car going extremely fast along the side of the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre and coming very close to knocking down three Garda outside the shopping centre's doors, countless of times going too fast at Luas stops in the city centre (sometimes with lights flashing, others not), and recently, five mins after a few Garda cars and a van cross O'Connell Street west bound along Abbey Street reasonably safety by slowing down, comes a Garda in an unmarked car who made no attempt to slow down until the last min and came very very close to hitting a car.

Going too fast in the above is in the context of the simi-pedestrianised street along St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre and near Luas stops with high volumes of people around with the expectation that even out of service trams slow down passing stops.

TheNog

It is absolutely ridiculous for a Garda car to be driven the wrong way down a Motorway/dual carraigeway. It doesn't matter how serious the call. The OP is right, the proper way to do it would have been to travell to the next bridge and approach the scene from the usual route, all the while doing a rolling road block and gradually bringing traffic to a stop before the scene. Then and only then could other ES vehicles travel down the wrong way of the road

Esel

If they had to do it, I would think it would be a lot safer to drive in the hard shoulder...

DublinWriter

Very good article in the SBP about six months ago detailing the shockingly low percentage of members of AGS that have actually done the in-service Advanced Driving Course.

Most drive around on what's known as "Chief's Permission", which is basically their line Chief Superintendant's written permission to drive an ES vehicle on nothing more than a full driving license.

I think the bigger problem here is the lack of resources given to AGS to train members.

antoinolachtnai

I was on the Drumcondra road one day (in 2008) going north towards the airport. It was near the Cat and Cage as I recall. A car came towards me, driving south. It was in the northbound bus lane, i.e., in the outside lane on the wrong side of the road. It then dodged across traffic to its own side of the road. It seemed to have blue flashers on it, but I'm not quite certain - everything happened pretty quickly. It was not a make or colour car that you would expect to see in Garda service (but that is certainly not to say it wasn't an official vehicle). As it happened, the traffic was very slow and the whole thing was actually not as dangerous as it sounded.

But this was certainly a pretty dangerous thing to do. The driver would have had no way of knowing what traffic conditions were like at the other end of the bus lane when he entered it.

There may have been a very good reason for what was done.

I did ring the incident in on 112 at the time.

monument

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It was not a make or colour car that you would expect to see in Garda service (but that is certainly not to say it wasn't an official vehicle).

I used to think the same for a while, but from observations the use of different makes for unmarked cars seams to have expanded in recent years.