Make mine a Gallon
It had to happen; with people selling their second cars, hauliers going out of business left, right & centre & me walking twenty miles to work in order ti earn enough cash in a day to pay for a teaspoon of petrol (that last bit was a lie, I actually use a 3litre turbo to get to work). The police are being told to cut down on fuel bills.
Apparently, the Met’s fuel bill has gone up £1.5million to £12.2million. It’s 6,500 vehicles cover 63million miles a year.
Devon & Cornwall’s fuel bill has risen by £500,000.
Some forces are advising officers of ways to use less fuel. Driving at 50mph rather than 70, turning the engine off at traffic lights - which reminds me of a chap who was also low on fuel, rather than turn his engine off at the traffic lights, he turned it off on a hill, so he could coast down the hill into town. Sadly he forgot that by doing so, the hill was on a bend, he managed to engage the steering lock & the 3p he saved in fuel costs was somewhat wiped out by the £3,000 repair bill for his car & the £6,000 his insurance had to fork out for a lady’s rebuolt wall.
What else was there, oh yes, to turn the air conditioning off. Air conditioning? I never had air conditioning in my police cars.
In fairness, these new guidelines, which apparently will form part of the new police driving manuals, are not designed to restrict going like a bat-out-of-hell on emergency shouts.
I remember in the early 80s we had restrictions on petrol. The panda cars were restricted to 30 miles a shift, traffic cars had a bit extra. Woe betide anyone who went over their limit per shift. There were inspectors whose job it was to go through the vehicle log books each day just to check nobosy had done more than 30 miles. There were apocryphal tales of people jacking the rear axle up & sticking the car in reverese for an hour or so to wind the clock back.
There’s nothing really new in modern policing.
Litew8 says:
3-Litre Turbo? AWESOME!!!!
August 8th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Tom says:
For the steering lock to engage he’d have to remove the keys too. The simplest way is to just switch off the engine. (I used this technique during my student years before I had an income)
August 8th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
ted says:
The early eighties. Memories.
We had mileage limits of 30 on the early shift (7 hours) , 40 on the backshift (9 hours) and 35 on the nightshift (8 hours).
One station had a phone call from the local priest about 6am. “I’m not sure if something is wrong but one of your panda cars has been reversing around our car park in circles for the last half an hour”.
Another time the backshift were told by the early shift “I ran out of miles”. “The panda is at Georges Cross (3 miles away), I parked it up and got the bus back to the station”.
Of course the crazy thing was that while the police had pretty much stopped vehicle patrols because the petrol budget was gone there was plenty overtime going for anything else because that was a different budget,
Happy days!
August 9th, 2008 at 2:35 am
anon says:
Back in those 80’s days we were restricted to whatever the total was per shift. Using our initiative we would disconnect the speedometer (none of this digital nonsense in those days), we were using Mk 3 Escorts and Vauxhall Chevettes. The ruse was obviously discovered when the mpg returns for vehicles had dropped below 10. The witch hunt to find out who had committed these terrible deeds was unsuccessful. Mind you all they had to do was check those with lots of scratches on the back of their hands, something you suffered when fiddling under the dashboard to disconnect the cable
August 9th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Area Trace No Search says:
I do between 70 and 120 miles a shift usually - It’ll be interesting to see which calls they want me to turn down to save the miles.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:09 pm