People are starting to get pissed off:
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AND a little form confirming said requirement, which, if shown to another police officer in a subsequent traffic stop, will make them say ‘Oh. Ok then, on your way’ 
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“Chambers says he’s taken the sign down due to its vulgarity, but plans to replace it with a clean version.”
?!?!?
Yes, and No. But I’m a white dude so don’t have much practice.
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Some relevant statistics:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/
Police come in at number 14, after:
- Fishers
- Loggers
- Aircraft pilots
- Miscellaneous resource extraction workers
- Iron and steel workers
- Roofers
- Garbage collectors
- Farmers and ranchers
- Truck drivers and traveling salespeople
- Power line installers
- Miscellaneous agiculture
- Construction
- Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
&
From here.
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As I understand it the greatest risk of death or injury for a police officer during a traffic stop is (not surprisingly) from other vehicles.
See for example this year’s figures so far for the US:
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/
You wouldn’t know it from articles like this:
or this:
I think it’s another one of those situations where the big flashy danger is the one people fixate on, ignoring the actual greater risk because that’s ‘routine’.
Like terrorism or crossing the road. Which is more likely to kill us? Crossing the road obviously but the attention is on terrorism/insert big worry of the moment.
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Yeah; working near traffic or driving around all day every day is genuinely dangerous. Notice the truck and taxi drivers on the list; they’re only out-lethalled by the heavy machinery and outdoor resource extraction folks.
The councils that hire my company go absolutely anal whenever we’re working near traffic; compulsory dayglo vests for everyone etc.
It’s a total pain in the arse. Most of the time it’s just a forest with a road through it, where we spend 90% of our time nowhere near the road. And the dayglo gear is usually hot, uncomfortable and highly effective at dispersing weed seeds ('cos it isn’t close-weave enough to resist attachment).
Maintaining the myth of police under attack provides justification for continued violence and impunity. Talking about the reality of police failing to exercise due care when working near traffic does not.
The distorted narrative didn’t happen by mistake; it’s deliberately manufactured.
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I think it’s both.
It’s a natural thing for police officers and their loved ones to fixate about and it also helps to bolster the macho, gung-ho image and need for heavy weaponry and routine violations of civil rights because officer safety.
So people are genuinely worried about it, hyping up that worry suits the police force in lots of ways, the ones you raised prominent among them, that of course makes police officers more worried, which leads to more demand for “something to be done”, and so on, and so on.
It of course also distracts attention from the actual risks of the job which the police force and those who fund them are not doing much about - see the story about Matthew Chism I linked to.
He was shot after a traffic stop when the passenger ran away and Chism gave chase on this own. Why was he on his own? Why did he give chase?
Should he have given chase? Should he have called for back up and let the guy get away if back up wasn’t available immediately? I don’t know.
But certainly, criticising a guy who was shot dead because he did something stupid or criticising the police department for not providing enough officers or training is going to be a lot less palatable to the police (and probably most of the public) than having a nice police funeral with a police escort and all the brass and banging on about how every traffic stop could see you dead in a hail of bullets.
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As far as I’m aware hi-vis in some form is pretty much mandatory for any kind of outside work in the UK these days.
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I’m in a blue shirt these days, but my old company used khaki.
It was quite useful; when folks saw us lurking in the bush, they’d assume we were National Parks rangers and leave us alone. 
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How dare you disrupt all this hero worship with facts and statistics!
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