Everybody has heard the urban myth about the driver who escaped a speeding fine because the police officer that issued his ticket wasn’t wearing a high visibility vest for Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S). So, with CarAdvice reader Trent e-mailing us with that exact question this week, we set off to investigate.<\/p>\n
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Q: Hi guys. I love the site! Keep up the great work. I’m from Victoria and a friend told me recently that police can’t issue you with traffic infringements if they are not wearing high visibility reflective vests for safety. Is this right?<\/p>\n
A: Good question, Trent. It’s one that has been doing the rounds for some time \u2014 where the individual fought a speeding fine because the police officer wasn’t wearing a high visibility reflective vest.<\/p>\n
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To get a definitive answer, we touched base with the Victoria Police to see what the ruling is in your state.<\/p>\n
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Victoria Police senior media officer, Ben Radisich, told CarAdvice:<\/p>\n
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“Members must wear a high visibility vest when performing a role where the primary function is road policing duties or when on roads near moving vehicles. Members will not be required to wear a high visibility vest<\/i><\/b><\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wherein the assessment of the member, wearing the vest represents a serious risk to health and safety (such as responding to an armed offender or siege situation); or<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If authorized by a supervisor on a specific occasion, for specific duties or planned operations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If members assess that wearing the high visibility vest on roads represents a serious risk to health and safety they must be able to justify such a decision if required to do so.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So there you have it, Trent. Generally speaking, police officers must wear high visibility reflective vests when performing duties outside of their vehicles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to break the law and use technicalities to get around infringement notices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everybody has heard the urban myth about the driver who escaped a speeding fine because the police officer that issued his ticket wasn’t \n Blogs on reflective clothing and reflective material. Be seen, be safer. <\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[123],"tags":[115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3534,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions\/3534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/safereflective.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}