The "Drive To Arrive" Broken Record

You’ve heard it repeatedly. It’s the constant, obnoxious drum-beat, “You can’t help unless you get there.” It also happens to be true. A busted and bent patrol car - with you in it – presents a whole different set of problems. Don’t be that knucklehead. Instead, get to where the help is needed and be an asset - not an unnecessary liability.

Have you ever responded to a call and found it to be EXACTLY what is was described as by dispatch? Me either and it's been almost 19 years. The folks who call in or the radio traffic that is broadcast rarely give the full picture. When I started my career in the Los Angeles region, I responded to a call one night of a patrol car collision involving another agency. Since it occurred in our area, we handled the investigation. The officer involved was responding to a burglary call to assist another unit that was already on scene. Reportedly there were possible suspects there as well. The officer was traveling in excess of 120 mph when he either lost control, was lane changed or suffered some other catastrophic event that caused his vehicle to go left, into the center divider, up onto the center divider and take a steel sign post broadside at the midpoint of his vehicle. The patrol car was unrecognizable, as was the officer, we found bullets from the spare magazines on his duty belt over 400 feet away. The burglary suspects were taken into custody with no drama, the responding officer didn’t see another sunrise.

There are incidents on this job that we need to get to right away, but the key is we need to get there. There’s that broken record again and in yet another example…a couple weeks back we had a call come over the radio that one of our officers was in a fight, then he lost his gun, then it was an officer down. Yep, you guessed it, one of the responding officer’s fubar’d his patrol car and crashed into another car by brake fading through a stop sign. But the other officer needed help, right?!?! Once the radio calmed down and everyone took a breath here’s what really happened…the other officer came across a physical fight on the side of the road, there were NO weapons involved and the officer was never physically engaged himself, he simply broke up the fight (and a couple of guys went to jail for drunk in public). So, Mr. “Brake Fade” never got there to help, caused another mess that required resources and now we are down a car. You can’t help if you don’t get there…starting to sink in yet?

Yes, sometimes we need to push the envelope and get somewhere as quick as humanly possibly (or as quick as a modern internal combustible engine will take us). But we need to arrive safely. Your Code 3 lights (and the siren) are not an impenetrable force field. Anticipate the actions of other drivers (you know folks do silly things when they see lights and hear sirens coming). Keep a high visual horizon. Don’t over drive your headlights at night. After a few (very few) hard braking applications during a response or a pursuit, your brakes are going to be shot. Remember high entry and watch for that apex when cornering. SLOW DOWN in the rain. Know your area and how to get places quicker without emergency equipment. Don’t be THAT guy who doesn’t get there and can’t help. Trust me, if you’re the one that needs help, you want it, we want to get there, none of us want to get diverted to clean up an avoidable mess.

Do yourself a favor, take a look at the yearly statistics on officer deaths and injuries. Cars and car wrecks kill and injure more of us than anything else and they are usually avoidable.  You can’t always control what the dirtbag you come across does, you can’t control the out of control vehicle spinning down the freeway towards your traffic stop. You CAN control you and your driving. Take breath, remember what you are doing and how you can’t help if you don’t get there. Drive to arrive people, it’s simple, make it happen. 

Stay Safe out there.

Original content by Michael McCarthy, posted to his Blog: The Highway Ranger.