Police appeal to find cyclist who helped them out of a jam

Poor reporting!  This was part of "operation bambozle", which is an attempt by cyclists to make police more visible and wear high visibility clothing and helmets when in public areas such as shops and pedestrian precincts.  

Cyclists have long been campaigning to make police more visible so that they can decide whether its OK to jump red lights and cycle on the pavement without getting booked.  

In addition the campaign aims to make the police wear helmets so that the police can survive impacts when they are hit by cylists, some police have protested that the standard issue police bone-dome is only fit for being hit with a baseball bat or bitten by a dog; and that is just doesn't help when being knocked to the floor by a bike travelling at 12 mph.

 Others say the helmet spoils their hairstyle and that they shouldn't have to wear special safety clothing to nick crims on bikes since its a normal everyday occurence.  Officer Bill Plod of the helmetless police campaign gave a statement saying it "isn't fair that police should be responsible for their own safety when the bikes were whizzing past them at tremendous speeds", before adding, "if we wear a helmet we get totally bad hat-hair, I get an itchy scalp at night and anyway if we could just get these bikes to give us a bit more room and be nice to us it would all be ok, s'not fair!"

Of course they can't find her. She took her hi vis off so now she's invisible!

It's a trick! They want to book her for not wearing hi-viz when she rode off...

[smugbastard]I carry one in the car.[/smugbastard]

I don't know Northamptonshire very well but a quick check on Wikipedia confirms it is in neither France nor Scandanvia so I would suppose that the motoring laws in those countries do not apply there.

I think this woman is a very public spirited citizen and the fact that folks like her exist is reason to celebrate rather than recite the norwegian highway code and tut tut over the tops of our health and safety checklist clipboards.

Hooray for anonymous coat lending cyclists!

Good grief, quit being killjoys.

Even off duty, Police officers are expected to help out if one of teh first on the scene of an accident. As such having a high-viz in any car they use should be automatic.  It's not just France (as Paul said) but also Scandinavia has a legal requirement for hi-viz in cars. If they're not in teh glove box, or rear pockets of front seats, car's fail the EU control (MOT equivalent). You can also be fined if the roads authority do a check, as they also find truck drivers for tyres under 5mm tread in winter, or for not having "winter" rated tyres on anything over 3.5 tonnes after 1st Nov undtil Easter,

Maybe it was a personal car to avoid blocking a work car, or a hire car....

hmmm in France, it's mandatory to have a high viz jacket inside the car to put on before getting out at a breakdown or other incident... they're pretty cheap and don't take up much space. All our fleet cars have them at work as well as decent first aid kits and a fire extinguisher... perhaps we should be querying as to why they didn't have them?

tsk, they didn't have a hi-vis each in their car?