how the hell does this happen seen this being recovered today RIP
maybe fell asleep then hit something never to wake up.
r.i.p to the driver
They were recovering a vehicle on the road & he ran into it.
That’s horrible.
A sad affair, but I read the circumstances differently.
Police were called to the area to help a recovery firm remove a broken-down vehicle in the early hours of Saturday and officers then closed the road.
Whether by the Police or by the Highways Agency Traffic Officers at the decision of Police matters not, but I would suspect the latter.
At 0400 BST a lorry collided with a stationary vehicle at the scene.
Which suggests that the road was already closed.
IPCC referral
Police are appealing for witnesses to the collision to contact them
Anyone who was on the A417 near its junction with the A419, between 0300 and 0400 BST, is asked to contact police
Two points here. IPCC referral is significant in that they are requesting another Force to consider whether their were any failings at an ‘operational’ level.
The second is that they are asking for witnesses up to an hour before the collision, at the site of the road closure.
My feeling. He being Swindon based, he was only 20-30 minutes away from being on his way home. Unless one knows the side road and lanes intimately (which I don’t) then, with a vehicle of that height, diversion routes are limited. Going through Cirencester is out of the question because of a low bridge South of there. To the East, the A40 has a low bridge approaching Oxford. Dropping down from the A40 to the A420 is effectively impossible due to weight limits at Lechlade and one that has appeared on the A415(?) South of Wilton in the last couple of years, presumably for environmental reasons as opposed to ‘structural’ concerns.
Which leaves the options of:- #1. Returning to the M5 and going along the M4. #2. Stow-in-the-Wold, Moreton-in-Marsh, A44 to Peartree, A34 to the A420.
Either of which would take somewhere in the region of 2 1/2 hours.
I’m inclined to think that he went through Cirencester hoping to rejoin the a A417(9) at the Southern junction and, also finding that ‘coned’ removed the cones and drove on, subsequently colliding with the ‘wrecker’.
If, as intimated, there will be an IPCC investigation regarding ‘operational’ failings, then one of the issues that they might wish to consider, I suggest, is the absence of viable alternative routes, particularly with regard to the restrictions imposed on ‘Night Workers’ incumbent upon the Working Time Regulations, and whether it might have been preferable, dependant upon the expected time needed to recover the original vehicle, to ‘stack’ trucks pending the re-opening of the road.