Why not use right hand drive patrol cars? & Why aren't OD's suicides?

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

You'd be closer to the sidewalk for casual interactions with civilians, 4-5 steps closer for a foot pursuit, have a little more room for your (right handed) pistol, etc.

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1. NEVER let anyone get close to that door!

2. Closer to some foot pursuits, but farther from others. No net gain.

3. Simply not so, in any patrol vehicle I ever used. A major reason that I chose to carry on the right hip, even though I am left-handed, was so I could have better access to my duty handgun, while seated in the driver’s seat, inside a patrol vehicle. (One-person cars were the norm.) When I started training and evaluating rookies, I had to ride shotgun 3+ nights a week, and, until we started using Chevrolet Tahoes, access to my right hip was seriously compromised, while in the passenger seat.

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

4-5 steps closer for a foot pursuit

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Did you not watch Adam-12 as a kid? Your junior partner gets out and runs while you drive the car. ;)

Seriously, there are still departments with two officers per car, or with special units with two officers per car.

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

I'd think if a large department ordered 3000+ police interceptors the manufacturer would be willing to make it RHD in the US, but even if it cost more the price of the car is insignificant compared to the labor cost of the police force so a tiny gain in productivity would more than make up for it.

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You've obviously never dealt with or been the victim of municipal bean-counters...some departments order the "radio delete" option because it will save them $27 per car. And after driving patrol cars for the last 27 years, I'm not really sure how my "productivity" would have been any different driving an RHD vehicle.

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

Having driven a couple of RHD Japanese imports, you get used to it pretty quick. (Most) people don't hit anything when turning right afterall. But the initial few miles is very strange...

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I drove 118 miles last week in a LHD within a RHD country. I'm driving 236 miles in a RHD vehicle this week. Not the first time, definitely won't be the last time. Have done it many times in a few countries, it's a non-issue. Have driven for two weeks in a locale that uses LHD vehicles with a RHD road setup, too. Again, non-issue. The only accident we've had here is when two donkeys wandered in front of the vehicle at high speed. (spoiler: toyota 2, donkeys 0)

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

I'd think if a large department ordered 3000+ police interceptors the manufacturer would be willing to make it RHD in the US, but even if it cost more the price of the car is insignificant compared to the labor cost of the police force so a tiny gain in productivity would more than make up for it.

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I don't think that's the case. Ford and Chevy won't even keep a vehicle in the fleet lineup for police fleet purchases even when it's selling tens of thousands of copies. RHD is simply unnecessary and would be more expensive, and there's no way to justify the expense when there's multiple other line items that are actual requirements which are going unfunded or underfunded. Most PDs these days don't have money growing on trees for the good-idea fairy to come pick on the weekend.

Here's a pretty typical scenario:

So, you, the Chief of Odd PD, want to buy RHD vehicles and you're the Chief of one of America's bigger PDs. Okay, cool, do your thing. You're authorized for 5,000 officers to properly staff your requirements, but due to funding and the current state of anti-LE atmosphere you're only able to keep your staffing at just over 4,000, meaning some neighborhoods are going unpatrolled during certain hours and routine calls for service often take 45 minutes plus. When the creepin' crud goes around and people get sick, you routinely have to leave precincts unpatrolled as only enough officers show up to staff the station/static requirements (Desk, lockup/transport, etc). For a time you were mandating officers cover the gap through a call-in OT system, but it proved unsustainable when guys were working 6-7 days a week for weeks on end and started calling out themselves and leading to a hundred or so officers quitting, only worsening the problem. You've been able to get the numbers to hold steady at 4,000-4,100 after convincing the city council to reverse their decision on freezing officers promotions/pay increases, but your political capital to get more funding is pretty much smoked from that.

So, given this fairly typical police department, where's your money coming from for your RHD vehicles?

If you want to have RHD vehicles, you're going to need to cut funding in half for one of following programs: School Resource Officers/youth intervention that has already been dropped to part time, the under strength plainclothes anti-crime unit, the community policing/engagement unit, the new firearm purchase program to change out your chewed up Gen 2 Glocks for newer Gen 5 Glocks and update your long guns, or the initiative to encourage officers to live in poorer neighborhoods which shows a drop in crime.

In addition to half from one of those programs to pay for the increased cost of RHD vehicles, you will need to cut 1/4 funding from one of the following programs to pay for the driver retraining needed for indemnification purposes: vehicle maintenance which is already unable to keep vehicles on a proper maintenance and lifecycle program, range/DT/decisional shooting exercises which you/your cops value and have kept at a level barely exceeding state mandated minimums, or the extra week of training you put on the academy in excess of the state mandated minimum that way your cops could learn active shooter response tactics, tac-med, patrol rifle, shield and 40mm LL for patrol. Note that a week to teach all of those things is still pretty minimal, so you can't cut it further without dropping it altogether.

So........where's the money coming from? RHD still a good idea? This is how decisions are made in real life.

What if I told you that a good chunk of PDs in the US are in even worse financial shape, and require federal grants to hire new classes of police officers, are unable to mount any sort of proactive police work and simply show up to work to answer a backlog of calls that have been holding for 12+ hours, literally can not afford to teach anything other than the state mandated minimums, are robbing peter to pay paul as is, routinely cannibalize vehicles to keep others running, and their only source of new guns is the 1033 program? There's departments with excess funding, but they're usually not large enough to be able to warrant custom vehicle orders like RHD.

At my old department, if a supervisor saw me talking to a little old lady using a walker while seated in my patrol car, it would have resulted in verbal counseling. Repeating that behavior would have resulted in tactical re-training, and potentially performance based counseling, progressive discipline, and termination.

If another officer saw me do it, it would have resulted in a "get your head out of your ass" discussion.

It's hard enough to train police recruits to properly operate the cars they've supposedly grown up with. Right hand drive? Yeah, that would be absolutely brilliant.

I’m not LE, but I have an easy answer regarding the overdose/suicide thing. Negligent or accidental homicide offenses exist because laws put them in place. They exist for the purpose of appropriately punishing people who kill others without intent - in most cases, hitting them with a 2nd degree murder conviction would be obviously and grossly disproportionate to what they did.

A) we don’t have that sentencing problem with people who have killed themselves and B) cops don’t write the law, so they can’t create a new category of homicide even if it is a good idea.

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Originally Posted by 0ddl0t

I'd think if a large department ordered 3000+ police interceptors the manufacturer would be willing to make it RHD in the US, but even if it cost more the price of the car is insignificant compared to the labor cost of the police force so a tiny gain in productivity would more than make up for it.

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Having worked on a RHD version of a LHD program (DN-101, which became the '96 Ford Taurus/Mercury Sable), 3000 units would not even begin to cover the development costs, including design, tooling, and certification testing. We did RHD models for multiple markets, including Japan and Australia. The program sold less than 50,000 units and was quickly cancelled after one model year due to profitability issues. There were a lot of unique parts to make a RHD version of a vehicle and assembly was even more complex than the LHD vehicle, especially when built on the same line.

For 3000 vehicles, the additional development cost would probably result in an unpalatable vehicle sale price. Vehicle development is something that costs billions of dollars per program. The other approach is to take an existing RHD vehicle for a foreign market and upgrade the design to meet NHTSA/FMVSS requirements. While less costly, the investment is still steep.

I do miss driving the RHD vehicles. It was a hoot to go through drive-throughs backwards to grab lunch. The looks I would get still make me laugh.