Just to go back to the original post, responding back to a station in a Group Car, Logistics Car or even our 14 priority one for a firecall is not what we do in our Group.
If you are out in a Command Car and a job comes in then you respond to the station under normal driving conditions like all the other members do. If you are more than a few minutes away and miss the truck then too bad, obviously everyone else is closer and you are not needed. This has happened to me a number of times and we have never responded P1 to the station, if an accident was to happen the question would definetly be asked of what exactly you were responding P1 for, isn't that why you have other members in the brigade.
Of course if someone else requests you to respond back to the station P1 then that is a different story, as that person has then taken on the responsibility of authorising you to respond, if in doubt then check with your Group Duty Officer as to what you should do.
Responding P1 for no need makes us look like dads army and just creates OH&S issues. Even if we are out in our 14 and we get a job that requires our 24 or 24P we still only return priority 2, obviously if it is a job that our 14 would normally respond to then we will respond direct to the job (as long as we are in area and appropriately crewed).
As for Group Officers responding P1 to jobs that is easily covered with this line in the SOP's
incidents which are not under control or are in an unknown condition NB:Command vehicles and staff vehicles shall not respond p1 to any incidents below 2nd alarm unless requested by incident controller.
This talk of trucks responding from the city to jobs back in their own areas reminds me of a situation that occurred to one of our neighbouring brigades many years ago, I think they got an alarm call back home whilst their truck was in the city, you can guess what happened.
