The world has gone mad.

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Steve_Perry

MB Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 3, 2002
Messages
3,241
Location
Wales, U.K.
Car
CLS350CDI Grand Edition
linky

An ambulance driver allegedly clocked at 104mph while delivering a liver for a lifesaving transplant operation has been charged with speeding.

Mike Ferguson, a senior ambulance driver with West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service, was in an official vehicle with blue lights flashing when he was spotted by police on the A1 in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

Mr Ferguson, who has an unblemished record of over 30 years service, had been asked to transport a liver from St James's Hospital in Leeds to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge in the early hours of January 16.

He was charged with speeding by Lincolnshire police and is now due to appear before magistrates in Grantham.

The decision to prosecute has been condemned by Mr Ferguson's union the GMB, which said current guidelines concerning organ delivery and the use of blue lights needed to be clarified.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service conceded that the guidelines could be "ambiguous".
---------

This is just plain nuts :confused: :crazy:

S.
 
I'm sure there two sides, but if the situation/conditions were as above you would have to be a right w@nker of a plod to nick an organ transportation vehicle on duty. Pitty they couldn't deliver a new brain to the officer in question quick smart.
 
Do emergency vehicles have a speed limit to adhere to whilst responding to a call?

As you say there is never black or white... just various shades of grey but this seems a fairly dark shade imho.

S.
 
Just goes to show - don't believe what you read in the press...

He wasn't stopped, he was on a camera. When the Police see the car was registrered to an NHS Trust, they send the Notice of Intended Prosecution to THEM (not the driver) who get the chance to forward a certificate confirming the driver was completing a task where his speed was necessary (did his emplyer return this certificate?).

I know a Taxi driver whose lucrative side-line is his contract with the local NHS Trust to transport blood and organs (at nomal speeds in his taxi, across the country).

Was this an emergency? If it was, he has no worries. If it wasn't, the Police are bound not to discuss the case sub-justice.

Police, ambulance and fire service drivers are prosecuted for speeding - where they are unable to justify their speed. If anything, the cameras take the "let me off this one mate..." arguement away - if it can not be legally justified, they get "done". And no, we don't read about them in the papers, why should we? They plead guilty by post - as is their entitlement - unless they are summonsed (like this case?).

I think it has to be daft to prosecute an emergency service driver for speeding on an emergency run (although I think justifying 60mph past a school at closing time might be more than a little difficult...) but the facts of this case are, at best, only one sided.

I haven't seen his employer support his actions - only his union - does this mean he was abusing his blues? was it not an emergency run?

I blame the media. Nothing like half a story to keep the great unwashed excited...:bannana:
 
I wondered if he got pulled over! Even worse than prosecuting him, would be to further delay the organ delivery.

The only person I ever knew with a "blues" license was a St. Johns Ambulance driver.

Glad to hear NHS using mini cabs for organ delivery. Some of the cabs I've been in you are glad to get out the other end with all your organs still intact and where you left them, let alone rely on them to save your life.
 
Reading bbc news online earlier it said East Anglian Ambulance Service has been sent 1,050 speeding tickets by Cambridgeshire Police in the past 12 months. It then went on to say 'The spokesman said he was not aware that any ambulance drivers had been caught speeding when they could not prove they were on a 999 call'
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom