Spent about 30 minutes in a 4 mile queue on the A34 on Saturday to find it was caused by a broken down car & Caravan causing the road to go down to 1 lane. The Police were in attendance & it was fairly obvious looking at the situation that had they moved the vehicles about 30 yards to a point where the road went into 3 lanes (just before a roundabout) they could have maintained the 2 lanes. So feeling a tadge fed up I rang the Police control room (not using 999) .

Spoke to a very pleasant guy & the upshot is that except in a crucial situation Hampshire Police are not allowed to use their vehicles to tow others in case either vehicle is damaged & they are not allowed to ask members of the public to assist in pushing vehicles in case they are hurt in any way. All to avoid potential law suits

WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY COMING TOO.

Also found out that they are now buying Automatic pursuit vehicles, something to do with having less time with your hand off the steering wheel as they also need a free hand to switch all the toys on & off

Well, reading a Lexus owners' club magazine whilst having some new discs fitted to my IS200 on Friday, there was an article about Wiltshire Constabulary's latest pursuit car - a Lexus GS430. Auto of course, because that's all that Lexus do the GS in and apparently the quickest car they've ever had on the traffic fleet.

Oh, and it's not just reserved for ferrying the chief super around either, it's actually used in anger.

Darran.

Originally posted by Stuart_J in this post

Hampshire Police are not allowed to use their vehicles to tow others in case either vehicle is damaged & they are not allowed to ask members of the public to assist in pushing vehicles in case they are hurt in any way. All to avoid potential law suits

WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY COMING TOO.

As with so many things we're becoming a follow on model of the states! (except perhaps in the price of fuel)....I wish I'd gone into law.......

Sounds like you were lucky in that you got a response on the phone at least.

I suspect the Lexus is more of an unmarked "hit" car. I have seen lots of different makes going unmarked in Kent, Golf GTI 16v,s, a vRS, Nissan,s ,Volvos of course, Vauxhall Senators again, BMW,s ,as well as your Mondeos and Vectras, but please remember that Kent generally uses Peugeot cars for town work and a mix of Volvos, Range Rover/Discovery,s for the motorway gangs.

Cheers