Police idiocy part 3467

[BrilloPad]

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars | Daily Mail Online

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars after officers confuse whether to fill them with petrol or diesel

Would any police person who is not a racist, sexist moron who was bullied at school and trying to make up for it, please stand up.....

[DaveB]

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars | Daily Mail Online

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars after officers confuse whether to fill them with petrol or diesel

Would any police person who is not a racist, sexist moron who was bullied at school and trying to make up for it, please stand up.....

Well given that the usually quoted numbers for mis-fuelling incidents in the UK is around 150,000 a year and it generally costs you around £100 to have it sorted by a breakdown service, provided you realise in time and don't try and drive it, thats not actually that bad really. ~280 incidents a year from 31,000 officers. Bearing in mind they are not driving their own vehicles, and police vehicles are not all exclusively petrol or diesel, it only takes one slip in concentration to get it wrong.

I know you have an issue with the police in general but trying to use something like this to essentially insult them doesn't really do much for your credibility, such as it is.

[woohoo]

Pretty sure I spotted a device on dragons den, few years back that you could retro fit to a car and would stop you putting in the incorrect fuel. Nozzle size or something.

I've filled up the misses company car once with £2.47 (realised my mistake and stopped) of the wrong type of fuel - on her birthday. We spent the evening waiting for a loader (4x4) and then driven to Warrington. I don't think £2.47 worth of fuel would have broken the damn car but couldn't get on the internet to check and it was a company car so..£128 it cost to drain.

Now, I check at least 5 times I'm using the right fuel, even reading the fuel cap and then checking again against the pump.

[fatboyslim]

police are only human, number of incidents seem to be quite small for a large force, as another poster pointed out.

[WTFH]

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars | Daily Mail Online

Met Police spends £83,858 in three years on fixing cars after officers confuse whether to fill them with petrol or diesel

Would any police person who is not a racist, sexist moron who was bullied at school and trying to make up for it, please stand up.....

Let's look at the numbers the Mail have actually quoted...

Over the 3 year period, the Met has filled up slightly over 28,000,000 litres of fuel. For the sake of simplicity, let's say the average refuel is 56 litres. That would give us 500,000 refuels.
Of those 500,000 refuels, 213 were wrong. That's 0.04%.

0.04% is the same percentage as the amount of truth in most Mail headlines.
How much time and money was wasted on a frivolous FOI request by this rag that could have been spent on carrying out important business?
Their next story will be about the BBC, then about Europe. Rinse and repeat until they can do another one about foreigners/benefits cheats/house prices/terrorism, or maybe they could do one on non-dom tax cheats who like to stir up hatred - an inside story.

[Hobosapien]

Pretty sure I spotted a device on dragons den, few years back that you could retro fit to a car and would stop you putting in the incorrect fuel. Nozzle size or something.

Amazed this problem hasn't been solved by them changing the nozzle shape so that say petrol is a star and diesel a triangle.

Everyone (in the developed world certainly) had one of those early learning toys where you try to fit different shapes through holes as a toddler, so second nature, yet something so simple is overlooked.

World must be run by absolute morons.

[greenlake]

Everyone (in the developed world certainly) had one of those early learning toys where you try to fit different shapes through holes as a toddler, so second nature, yet something so simple is overlooked.

[original PM]

diesel nozzles do not fit generally fit unleaded cars as they are too big - this was actually bought in a few years back to try and reduce the chance to this happening.

Obviously unleaded pumps do fit in diesel cars.

The reason it was done this way - generally diesels are driven by men and they are less likely to put the wrong fuel in and so do not need something to physically stop them.

It's true that!

[xoggoth]

Can't be a*d to check obviously but also recall petrol in a diesel car is not as damaging as diesel in a petrol car. Bit surprising.

[original PM]

Can't be a*d to check obviously but also recall petrol in a diesel car is not as damaging as diesel in a petrol car. Bit surprising.

Indeed - it is to do with relative combustion rates or something - generally diesel goes with a bigger pop - but I am no expert and i am sure one will be along in a minute.