They are shutting laybys on the A14 because its too dangerous for HGV,s to emerge in to traffic but its ok for these guys to run across the motorway witha 6’ x 6’ roadsign?.
Is it me?.
Ahhh the A14 Why is it not a motorway,similar levels of traffic instead they restrict the Lorries to lane 1 and allow people to get killed because of feasibility studies only an Idiot needs a feasibility study for any stretch of this MOTORWAY 
Dazza:
snafu:
Why has this thread turned into HATO baitingCos you’re an easy target
Good answer 
(Sense of humour still in tact 
)
Why has this thread turned into HATO baiting?
I wouldnt dream of winding anyone up but can I redirect you to these postings.
Thanks to Wheel Nut for the link to that old post about HATOs.
Giving HATOs police powers is exactly like he says, ‘the start of a slippery slope’.
The sooner Cameron gets into power and has a long-overdue bonfire of civil servants, pen-pushers and half-measure wanabee coppers the better for our country.
You all know where I stand. I think HATOs are a complete waste of time. Sorry to you lads doing the job, like Snafu etc, and I’m sure most of you have good intentions, but I feel that in the main you are misguided. I work with a young lad who has tried to join the HA for about 3 years but to no avail. He’s a nice bloke, who wants to do his bit and I would never slag him off personally. However I completely disagree with the concept. It is simply “Policing on the cheap”.
The same goes for PCSOs and those “Street Wardens” who wander around city centres in hi-viz jackets in big groups. You know the ones. They wouldn’t dream of taking on a real villain, yet they strut their stuff as if they are the “front-line” in the deterring crime.
Let’s hope they never have to witness a young boy drowning.
Little bit of confusion over who does what here and whose role belongs to who !! The Highways Agency is a government body that we pay for to look after our roads and highway. HATO are Highways Agency Patrol Officers who despite the name don’t really have anything to do with the Highways Agency, they just use the name. The guys who put cones out are subcontracted by the HA (Highways Agency) to do work on the highways, they are privately employed. I’m not generally a critic of what HATO’s do, but it appears here they don’t much of what actually goes on !!! And to be honest i would have more faith in the Samaritans running the motorway network than the current HA.
Dazza:
. It is simply “Policing on the cheap”.
Are you dreaming or what? HATO’s don’t ‘police’ . They attend accidents, breakdowns etc with a highly visible presence and do jobs like help people off the carriageway, make sure they are safe etc…leaving trained police to do what they are trained to do. The fact we hardly have any police is hardly the HATO’s fault, or would you rather when we rang up to report a burgulary the cops say…sorry we have no one to attend, they are helping a wagon with a flat tyre on the M6?
‘Policing on the cheap’.what a laugh !!! I’m sure some of you guys hear random snippets of conversation and pick bits out of it.
THE TEMPLAR:
Sorry have to be truthful , the peeps of the HA who put cones out etc are useless [zb] , THERE I SAID IT , !
Your talking out of your rear m8 I did it for years and if someone did’nt do it what do you think the roads would be like now.
urban1:
THE TEMPLAR:
Sorry have to be truthful , the peeps of the HA who put cones out etc are useless [zb] , THERE I SAID IT , !Your talking out of your rear m8 I did it for years and if someone did’nt do it what do you think the roads would be like now.
CONELESS!!! Only Joking
chris:
urban1:
THE TEMPLAR:
Sorry have to be truthful , the peeps of the HA who put cones out etc are useless [zb] , THERE I SAID IT , !Your talking out of your rear m8 I did it for years and if someone did’nt do it what do you think the roads would be like now.
CONELESS!!!
Talking of HATOs and the like - did anyone see the C4 prog GRIDLOCK & ROAD RAGE - it did show a lot of what HATOs did on a daily basis.
A few issues ago, the advanced driving magazine had a hugh piece on a HATO who worked on the M25 and they folled him for a whole shift - very interesting reading and quite an eye opener.
Mike-C:
Little bit of confusion over who does what here and whose role belongs to who !! The Highways Agency is a government body that we pay for to look after our roads and highway.
Just to clear up your confusion Mike, The Highways Agency is what’s known as an “Executive Agency" of the Department for Transport, like VOSA & the DVLA amongst others.
Mike-C:
HATO are Highways Agency Patrol Officers
Shouldn’t they be called “HAPOs” then?
Mike-C:
who despite the name don’t really have anything to do with the Highways Agency, they just use the name. The guys who put cones out are subcontracted by the HA (Highways Agency) to do work on the highways, they are privately employed.
You’re still confused Mike, it sounds like you’re mixing up HATOs with the lads from, say Amey Mouchel, either way they are both funded indirectly out of the public ■■■■■, therefore they take their remit from the government but act like a private company.
Mike-C:
Are you dreaming or what? HATO’s don’t ‘police’ . They attend accidents, breakdowns etc with a highly visible presence and do jobs like help people off the carriageway, make sure they are safe etc…leaving trained police to do what they are trained to do. The fact we hardly have any police is hardly the HATO’s fault, or would you rather when we rang up to report a burgulary the cops say…sorry we have no one to attend, they are helping a wagon with a flat tyre on the M6?
Mike-C:
‘Policing on the cheap’.what a laugh !!! I’m sure some of you guys hear random snippets of conversation and pick bits out of it.
No, it’s known as having a personal opinion Mike, it might not fit in with your light & shade view of the world, but it’s what I genuinely believe. I do not think there are enough police in the UK at all. The point is even made by yourself when you trot out the old chestnut about no police available to attend a burglary. If we have to choose between Beat Bobbies and Traffic Cops then it stands to reason that we do not have enough.
As I said earlier, I am not knocking the lads who do the job, but no-one voted to employ civilians taking over the role of Police Officers and that is what is happening.
Dazza:
As I said earlier, I am not knocking the lads who do the job, but no-one voted to employ civilians taking over the role of Police Officers and that is what is happening.
For a start, we haven’t taken over from police officers, the motorways are, for want of a better phrase, “owned” by the H.A. we are employed by the H.A. to patrol their motorways to try and keep them flowing as best as we can. You all agree that jams caused as a result of an RTC are a pain in the arse especially when the ever dwindling numbers of Traffic Police are delayed elsewhere. We are not here to take over from the police but to supplement them. Why delay a highly trained, highly paid police officer by making them sit with a broken down vehicle when a person trained specially for non urgent jobs can do it. The police still retain overall command when it comes to criminal matters so I don’t see how we can be classed as “wannabe coppers” when we’re not performing a police role!
Highwayman, you personally may not want to take over from the police, but there are a number of your colleagues that do. Take Big Jase, for instance. In this post, Do we need more police? he describes a hypothetical situation in detail, whereby he as a HATO with beefed-up powers chases after a truck which has “clipped a car and spun it on its roof”.
Then look at this bulletin from the Highways Agency, issued on 29 November 2007 and tell me that I’ve got it all wrong. What is happening is that there is becoming a two-tier level of enforcement on the UK’s road network and this will benefit no-one.
Traffic officers to get new powers
I agree with Wheel Nut. It’s the start of a slippery slope, and part of a wider plan by the government to get more results with less money. It’s the same with PCSOs.
Dazza:
Highwayman, you personally may not want to take over from the police, but there are a number of your colleagues that do. Take Big Jase, for instance. In this post, Do we need more police? he describes a hypothetical situation in detail, whereby he as a HATO with beefed-up powers chases after a truck which has “clipped a car and spun it on its roof”.Then look at this bulletin from the Highways Agency, issued on 29 November 2007 and tell me that I’ve got it all wrong. What is happening is that there is becoming a two-tier level of enforcement on the UK’s road network and this will benefit no-one.
Traffic officers to get new powers
I agree with Wheel Nut. It’s the start of a slippery slope, and part of a wider plan by the government to get more results with less money. It’s the same with PCSOs.
I’m starting to find myself repeating things over and over again 
We are not here to replace the police!! We are here to manage the traffic on our network, nothing more, nothing less!! We do not deal with police matters. The new powers you say we are getting are nothing to do with criminal matters, it is traffic management powers. As it stands at the moment, if a vehicle is found abandoned on the motorway network, we have to radio our control, who in turn, telephones the relevant police control room and requests that the duty rota garage collects the vehicle and clears it from the network. The police control will then phone our control and tell them which garage is coming out and how long it will be. Our control then radios us and passes the information to us. As you can see this is a long winded way of doing things, all that is going to happen is that the H.A. will have the relevant powers to allow them to deal with the duty garage directly, nothing underhanded, nothing sinister, just cutting down on duplication and reducing waiting times for the HATO patrols stuck on the hard shoulder for any longer than need be, which we all agree is a pretty dangerous place to be at times The same is also the case in RTC’s, commercial recovery companies, i.e. RAC, AA, Green Flag, etc. will not pick up one of their members vehicles if it has been involved in a RTC. Therefore duty garage has to come and retrieve it. If the vehicle is immovable, it makes sense to get the duty out as quickly as possible to get the lane/lanes reopened as soon as possible. This is what the extra powers are for 
As for Jase, I wouldn’t worry too much about him, we are not going to get any type of enforcement powers, or other powers of any kind, any time in the near future. The powers we have now are more than adequate for the job we are trained to do. If we do get any extra powers, it’ll be a long time time down the line when we are well and truly old sweats on the motorway network. You have to agree that, as a rule, we have got our standards pretty high in a short space of time. Once we have doing the job for, say, 10 years everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about
Dazza:
Mike-C:
Little bit of confusion over who does what here and whose role belongs to who !! The Highways Agency is a government body that we pay for to look after our roads and highway.Just to clear up your confusion Mike, The Highways Agency is what’s known as an “Executive Agency" of the Department for Transport, like VOSA & the DVLA amongst others.
Mike-C:
HATO are Highways Agency Patrol OfficersShouldn’t they be called “HAPOs” then?
Yeah i meant Highways Agency Traffic Officers
Dazza:
Mike-C:
who despite the name don’t really have anything to do with the Highways Agency, they just use the name. The guys who put cones out are subcontracted by the HA (Highways Agency) to do work on the highways, they are privately employed.You’re still confused Mike, it sounds like you’re mixing up HATOs with the lads from, say Amey Mouchel, either way they are both funded indirectly out of the public ■■■■■, therefore they take their remit from the government but act like a private company.
No i definately understand how it works !! The HA are exactly that, an ‘agency’. We pay them, they pass the work onto he likes of Amey Mouchel and Atkins Global who make millions of £’s from it.
Dazza:
Mike-C:
Are you dreaming or what? HATO’s don’t ‘police’ . They attend accidents, breakdowns etc with a highly visible presence and do jobs like help people off the carriageway, make sure they are safe etc…leaving trained police to do what they are trained to do. The fact we hardly have any police is hardly the HATO’s fault, or would you rather when we rang up to report a burgulary the cops say…sorry we have no one to attend, they are helping a wagon with a flat tyre on the M6?Mike-C:
‘Policing on the cheap’.what a laugh !!! I’m sure some of you guys hear random snippets of conversation and pick bits out of it.No, it’s known as having a personal opinion Mike, it might not fit in with your light & shade view of the world, but it’s what I genuinely believe. I do not think there are enough police in the UK at all. The point is even made by yourself when you trot out the old chestnut about no police available to attend a burglary. If we have to choose between Beat Bobbies and Traffic Cops then it stands to reason that we do not have enough.
As I said earlier, I am not knocking the lads who do the job, but no-one voted to employ civilians taking over the role of Police Officers and that is what is happening.
Well i don’t see the HATO’s policing, so thats why i don’t see it as policing on the cheap. Yes we need more coppers both on the beat and the roads but thats a different issue to HATO’s? What happened to traffic wardens, who besides giving tickets out actually directed traffic? They slipped away to be replaced by target chasing ticket issuers.
WARNING WARNING
THERE IS A HIGH POSSIBILITY THIS THREAD COULD BE HIJACKED TO ATTACK TRAFFIC WARDENS
BEWARE!!!
chris:
WARNING WARNINGTHERE IS A HIGH POSSIBILITY THIS THREAD COULD BE HIJACKED TO ATTACK TRAFFIC WARDENS
BEWARE!!!
I hope not!! I done that before I became a HATO 
You are joking arnt you urban1 , just remind me again where the roads are ok , ■■ have you been on the A66 recently , and what about the chinless wonders who think its a laugh to throw cones in front of trucks , one of the subbies in our yard is suing the HA hes got them on film throwing stuff at passing trucks , thugs most of them .
In my experience the road workers know exactly what they’re doing and the relevant H&S to do it. This is when you’re dealing with the likes of Amey Mouchel and Carillion…
Some pictures for you from my perspective
The only time this work could get done was at night because of the traffic levels. None of the drivers liked doing the job and it more often got passed to inexperienced Agency Drivers. However, the times I did do it were numerous spreading over my 5 year career in that company.
H&S is very important to me. Especially when you consider I was certified for working up to 26 meter access platforms and was scared of heights 
But it was a job. And now I’m out of it and can breath a little easier.
If I’m going through roadworks I’ll slow down a bit more than the limit, ie 35 in a 40. I know I’ll get a lot of flack for it from here but until you’ve been working in L2 of a HS, L1 and L2 motorway closure with L3 live and trucks have thundered past at 56 in a 40 limit…
And finally. Damage. The following damage was done when the driver had a moment of distraction and hit the armco at 70mph on the motorway. No driver was injured, but you can see the force of the damage from the “glancing blow”.
I’m glad I’m not working THERE anymore!