Ever see a motorcade going down the street and wonder how it works? After, that is, getting over your frustration at being stopped until it passed. Well, prepare to be educated.
Motorcades do not spontaneously create themselves, but are formed through a great deal of work and stress, and there are an amazing array of things that can go wrong at any point in the process.
- First, you need a logistics person to figure out what vehicles are needed, where the motorcade will go, and how it will get there.
- Second, you need to know how many people are riding in the cars, what their job is, and what car each will sit in.
- Third, you need the cars, with drivers who are capable of listening without imposing their own thoughts on what they are doing. It doesn't matter if they actually know better, they just need to listen and follow instructions.
- Fourth, you need to arrange for all the police to assist with riding in front of and behind the motorcade, to insure that cross streets, stop lights, and stop signs can be gone through without slowing.
-Fifth, you need some poor sap to ride near the back of the train who is in charge of getting the cars lined up correctly, and to keep an eye on the whole process while it drives along. When everyone arrives at the final destination, it is also this person's responsibility to keep the whole thing together in case some over-eager traffic cop decides to tell a driver in the middle of the motorcade to go somewhere they should not go.
In six days of managing a motorcade, that consisted of anywhere from 15 to 35 vehicles, had 20+ total movements, as many as three Very Very Important Persons in any one movement, and only about half of the movements went as planned. Not only were we contending with up to 40 other motorcades and a dozen other governments, there were a number of logistics challenges with local communication. At one point I had to jump out of my vehicle and sprint after another one that was several cars forward of me. in another instance I was forced to jump into a moving vehicle in order to insure that the group stayed together and another motorcade didn't get into the middle of mine. From having heated words with police and armed soldiers, to apologizing to others for those same strong words, it was an exercise in never-ending chaos. Possibly the most memorable move was when we had to park the majority of the package in a scrub forest with cattle roaming around because there was no street parking within 500 Meters of the drop zone.
All-in-all, the best lessons I learned was that no matter what the cost, get radios for every car, and make sure that the drivers understand from the beginning that they are to ONLY listen to the officers in charge of the motorcade and not pay attention to any other instructions. Unless they point guns at you, and then you can listen.
