Off-duty policeman found guilty of dangerous driving following incident with cyclist

"he ended up on the pavement after pressing the accelerator [...] due to being unfamiliar with driving an automatic"

If only accelerator pedals were fitted to cars with manual gearboxes. Perhaps the poor diddums should sue Nissan for their hopelessly unsafe car designs?

"Suffolk Constabulary [...] will look at what additional action may now be taken"

I predict this will end up being "no action". Cops don't care when non-cops run bike riders over, so why would they suddenly start caring when one of their own number does it?

SideBurn - what do you do for a living ?.
Dont get me wrong we have different levels of Police driving and i've put them below as a lot of people will think we are all the same.
We have 4 levels of drivers.
1: standard drivers who are not allowed to use blue lights and sirens.
2: blues and twos, those who can use blue lights and sirens but only for emergency calls and not for pursuits.
3: IPP - pursuit trained drivers.
4: adavanced drivers - such as motor patrols and firearms who are highly trained in pursuit etc.

I'm not sticking up for him here because he's been a cock and deserves everything he gets imho but just because he's done a Police driving course in the past does not make him a better driver.

I did mine over 25 years ago and unless you have a prang you dont get retested. My force has started bringing in a new system whereby every couple of years you have to do a 2 day assessment course to see if your driving is upto standard and if you fail you have your driving authority removed and you have to do the full 2 week course again but i've been in cars whereby cops slip back into bad habits just like normal drivers and are no better.

Personally i hate automatics and will never drive them.

He'll probably get sacked or final warning. If he's a substantive Bobby with more than a few months service he will be a trained Police driver, possibly even to advanced level depending on his role.

That makes him a better driver than most competent drivers and most of us, so the excuse he used is pathetic.

Moment of red mist that should not have happened, his resolve and duty of care has to be so much higher than Joe public and my guess is he knows it.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it quite easy to distinguish between the accelerator and the brake, and as far as I'm aware they don't swap them arround when they fit an automatic gearbox.... if he was bing done for brake testing someone then it might be a fari defence to say I pressed the cluch forgetting its and auto and slammed the brakes on... but accelerator really? and you are a copper?

Odds on he will get asked to resign or face the charge of bringing the force into disrepute.

Yet another example of a member of the filth acting like a thug. He should be in prison.

Cock

if it's anything like my local force not much. The local Chief Constable was forced to re-instate a copper sacked for drunk driving because of a technicality...

He plainly hadn't thought his defence through, edit.

Serves you right, Idiot.

I hope he gets sacked, honestly f##k him.

Given the outcome, I can only assume the jury believed his was lying in the witness box and do we really need a police officer like that. Having said that he'd fit right in at the MET