Right, yesterday I was driving on the A46, Coventry, heading for the M6 North at J2. I spotted a Traffic Officers Jeep ahead of me, doing around 40mph on a dual carriageway making everything overtake them. I was a few vehicles behind them as they entered the slip rd north and around two miles further along there was a twin wheel based transit sat stationary, with one wheel just over the white line and the rest in lane 1 I thought that they were attending this hazard but they indicated to go round it and continued on. Next there was a LGV parked up in a safe place and again they sailed past. They continued onto the J3 slip and I lost sight of them. Remember this is a SMART stretch of motorway and no signs had been activated. Happened around 4pm on Tuesday.
Perhaps they where aware that the matter was being dealt with by others and they was going onto something else,sometimes things are not what they seem
TomCrin:
Right, yesterday I was driving on the A46, Coventry, heading for the M6 North at J2. I spotted a Traffic Officers Jeep ahead of me, doing around 40mph on a dual carriageway making everything overtake them. I was a few vehicles behind them as they entered the slip rd north and around two miles further along there was a twin wheel based transit sat stationary, with one wheel just over the white line and the rest in lane 1 I thought that they were attending this hazard but they indicated to go round it and continued on. Next there was a LGV parked up in a safe place and again they sailed past. They continued onto the J3 slip and I lost sight of them. Remember this is a SMART stretch of motorway and no signs had been activated. Happened around 4pm on Tuesday.
This industry, (and these forums) has always had more than it share of interfering know it all busybodies, congratulations! you’ve joined that list. Get on with your own job.
How do you know they were not going to a more serious call out,.and radioed in the two other less important events, or maybe even the Old Bill had told them they were on their way, who knows, who cares.
Consider yourself lucky they did NOT stop to deal with them - they’d have closed two lanes at least (if not the whole carriageway) and you’d have been stuck there for an hour…
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I assume you mean Highways England traffic officer rather than police car?
Pretty sure they only cover motorways and certain trunk roads, although can be asked to attend other roads by the police from what’s been said before. They of course use the other roads to get around, but don’t think they have jurisdiction over them.
People changing tyres - if they are daft enough not to pull in then that’s their problem. Hopefully other traffic is taking enough notice to avoid them. If they wrre sensible they’d have a warning triangle, but many don’t.
Am confused as to what the smart motorway has to do with the A46. Can’t remember the road layout offhand, but unless the car is on a motorway or the truck is parked on a motorway, then its likely nothing they can do anything about beyond report it.
Plus there’s managers who don’t understand “I was trying to be helpful” or " trying to improve the job". All they see is a car traffic officer car stopped on a road that isn’t under their jurisdiction, and they’ll be writing a report on the driver. Just not worth the hassle. In my experience they are decent people likely not paid nearly enough for the hassle.
Of course you could have parked up behind the broken down car or phoned it in to police non emergency, but I know “its not my job”. Never is.
Might have gotten a more sympathetic response if you didn’t try slagging them off without knowing what they were actually doing.
Without knowing the area, we don’t work on A roads as a rule, the callsign could have been on route to an immediate graded incident on the motorway network. They will have passed the details of the vehicles to their control who would have informed the police control desk. Just because we don’t stop, we could be tasked to something else, so please don’t assume we have just driven past.
trevHCS:
I assume you mean Highways England traffic officer rather than police car?Pretty sure they only cover motorways and certain trunk roads, although can be asked to attend other roads by the police from what’s been said before. They of course use the other roads to get around, but don’t think they have jurisdiction over them.
People changing tyres - if they are daft enough not to pull in then that’s their problem. Hopefully other traffic is taking enough notice to avoid them. If they wrre sensible they’d have a warning triangle, but many don’t.
Am confused as to what the smart motorway has to do with the A46. Can’t remember the road layout offhand, but unless the car is on a motorway or the truck is parked on a motorway, then its likely nothing they can do anything about beyond report it.
Plus there’s managers who don’t understand “I was trying to be helpful” or " trying to improve the job". All they see is a car traffic officer car stopped on a road that isn’t under their jurisdiction, and they’ll be writing a report on the driver. Just not worth the hassle. In my experience they are decent people likely not paid nearly enough for the hassle.
Of course you could have parked up behind the broken down car or phoned it in to police non emergency, but I know “its not my job”. Never is.
Might have gotten a more sympathetic response if you didn’t try slagging them off without knowing what they were actually doing.
If you read the op again, you’ll notice that he talks about two incidents on the M6, after joining at j 2, and before the patrol car leaves at j.3.
If it really happened.
BossHogg:
Without knowing the area, we don’t work on A roads as a rule, the callsign could have been on route to an immediate graded incident on the motorway network. They will have passed the details of the vehicles to their control who would have informed the police control desk. Just because we don’t stop, we could be tasked to something else, so please don’t assume we have just driven past.
They were either on their way to the Chippy for the 6 portions of Cod & Chips or were on their way back to “base” with the chips and it was a no no to respond to an incident, well OK maybe after they had scoffed their tea but no way would the F & C be allowed to go cold and wasted ! 
Bewick.
It may have also been a none single crew accredited officer picking a car up from service. They’re not allowed to stop on their own.
There’s a lot of second guessing going on without the “facts” being known, unless they come to light in the words of Dragons Den Duncan - am oot. 
What I’d like to know why is it every time you go in the services there’s 2of them parked up engines running just sat there doing nothing for ages over to you Boss Hogg
It’s for social distancing measures, double crew trained officers can’t share the same vehicle so they drive round in tandem. Once this pandemic is under control, they’ll revert to two in a car.