Social and Legal Studios

Abstract

The article was written in the framework of the project entitled “Development of Police vehicles classification depending on their purpose and standardization of the central console of vehicles in the scope of arrangement and installation of ICT system and control devices of special purpose signals” DOB-BIO7/04/02/2015 with the value of PLN 4 058 789, co-funded by the National Centre for Research and Development under the contest 7/2015 [1]. An important area of the Police functioning is road safety. Police activities targeted at improving road safety were one of the priorities of the Head Police Chief for the period of 2016-2018 [5]. The scale of needs associated with the provision of road safety can be referred to in correlation to the number of vehicles that commute on Polish roads. In Poland, in 2017, more than 29 million motor vehicles were registered in total [6]. The Police’s statistics show that in 2017, the Police reported 32 760 road accidents. As a result of these road accidents, 2 831 people were killed, and 39 466 people were wounded. In 2017, the Police reported 436 469 road collisions. Police vehicles are adapted to the needs of the service, however, for numerous years there was a lack of a comprehensive approach to safety, comfort, and ergonomics of work performed in police cars. In recent years, it has been changing rapidly. An example of this approach may be the research projects reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration and Polish Police Headquarters for the subsequent competitions announced by the National Research and Development Centre. One of such projects is the project entitled “Development of Police vehicles classification depending on their purpose and standardization of the central console of vehicles in the scope of arrangement and installation of ICT system and control devices of special purpose signals”, no DOB-BIO7/04/02/2015, which aims to standardize the central console of the vehicles to enable installation of communication and ICT equipment in places adapted for this in official vehicles. This project has been implemented since December 2015, by the Police Academy in Szczytno, Industrial Automobile Institute from Warsaw and Marvel SP. z o.o. in Łódź. In the framework of this project, in December 2016 surveys were carried out on a group of 354 officers of several randomly selected police units. The aim of the research was to identify the police officers’ opinions about the ergonomics and safety of vehicles in which they perform their duty. Respondents were asked about their opinions on the safety and ergonomics of the specialised equipment currently used, mounted to serially produced vehicles. The number of vehicles presently exploited by Polish Police is more than 21,000. Respondents were asked 22 questions about safety. Some of the questions were about the safety of devices installed in official vehicles. All Police vehicles are equipped with radio stations and most of them – in devices managing the light and sound signals. Hence, respondents were asked about the safe use of these devices during the execution of their duties. This article presents results of surveys

Keywords: integration, security, Police duty vehicles, comfort, ergonomic

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