But he also did 120 in a 60 zone, and 60 in a thirty zone!!!
From an OFFICIAL site
Police, quite rightly, often emerge as heroes in these incidents, but they too are involved in their share of fatal road accidents. One of the most notorious in recent times was the incident when a police driving instructor, driving an unmarked, high performance Rover 827 on the A10 at Harston in Cambridgeshire, ran into a nurse's car and killed her. PC Gerard Sharratt was involved in a 100mph training exercise, with three students in his car, acting as a “bandit”, being chased by another car driven by a police student. He rounded a left hand bend and “did a double-take” when he saw cars queuing in front of him, braked, skidded and hit the stationary car owned by Miss Judith Wood, 27, at 56mph. Sharratt had been driving at between 100 and 116mph when he had braked44.
Then, in March 1996, Channel 4 TV news presenter, Sheena McDonald, was knocked down and seriously injured by a police van answering an emergency call to a fight in Holloway, north London45.
But by no means all accidents occur while police vehicles are responding to emergency calls. In 1997, PC Adrian Ward was taking Shelley Simmonite, 15, home to her parents after she had been arrested for suspected shoplifting. Driving at up to 120mph, he had gone through a red light and had lost control, hitting a van. He was estimated to have been travelling at 65-75mph when had applied the brakes. Shelley was killed in the crash46.
In 1996, after the Cambridgeshire incident, police were being urged to review their pursuit training47 and, in 1998, the Lund report recommended that all police involved in pursuits be given special training. But, in November 2000, it was being variously reported that the number of deaths from accidents during police chases had risen by more than 50 percent48, by 140 percent49 and, in December, by 300 percent50. Either way, 22 people had been killed during police chases and there had been nine deaths arising from other police road accidents. Overall, there had been 17,300 road accidents involving the police in 1998. Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the Police Complaints Authority, observed:
“There is worrying evidence (that) the skill and judgement of some police officers is open to question and criticism”51.
Nor are police evidently great respecters of traffic laws — or, at least, any greater respecters than ordinary people. That was a finding of the TRL, which suggested that only nine percent of magistrates and 11 percent of police would observe the 30mph limit on an urban road in clear daylight with little traffic52. And, apart from the celebrated case of Home Secretary Jack Straw's police driver who escaped prosecution despite driving at 103mph on the M5, there have been a number of other high profile embarrassments.
In 1996, Ben Gunn, the Chief Constable of the Cambridge Police, was seen driving at 90mph on the M1153. At least he was given a fixed penalty ticket and three penalty points. But not so the chauffeur of Dennis O'Connor, head of the Surrey police, who in December 2000 saw his driver escape without sanction when his car was pulled over by his own officers on the A3 near Guildford, despite his driving at 78mph in a 50mph zone54. Others had not been so fortunate. In September 1999, three policemen were banned from driving after being caught riding their motorcycles at 110mph through one of their own speed traps, on a road with a 60mph limit55.
