anyone else get caught up in the nonsense on the m1 south bound yesterday?
i personally had five n half hours from j1 m18 to j28 m1, thered been an accident fair enough, reports of a wagon gone over and due to the delays i assumed had made quite a mess, finnaly got through the roadworks to the sceen expecting to see an artic on it’s side with the load al over but no it was a poxy 7.5t box van with no cab damage and had clearly been in the field at the side of the motorway it had took em seven hours to drag the thing out and get the motorway moving including shutting the southbound all together for the best part of an hour! fair enough if people are seriously injured they need attention first but by all accounts the driver walked away! seems that now traffic cops want to spend as much time as possible at an accident and if that means blocking a major motorway for hours they don’t give a ■■■■! surely it’s time to expand the highways agency and give them equipment to deal with anything they might come accross to keep the roads moving.
quite often when this happens abroad they will leave it there until the roads are less busy - especially in italy where i remember seeing a truck and trailer on it’s side on the exit road from a service area to the motorway or perhaps it was the other way around but it was there for 3 days and i assume they were planning to move it at the weekend.
a couple of months ago the m20 was closed coastbound on a saturday morning - i had come off the train and noticed that there were no cars coming south - i expected there to be a massive accident - i saw the flashing blue lights of about 3 police cars - an ambulance - a paramedic - a fire car but no fire engine - flashing yellow lights of a recovery truck but couldn’t see anything else until i got a little bit closer - there it was - a small car half way up the embankment and some central reservation barrier damage with the usual spray of stones.
there appeared to be no other vehicles involved so i will assume that the driver fell asleep and was probably killed in the accident.
one has to question why on earth they need to close the motorway for a minor accident that isn’t even on the motorway anymore even if the driver or a passenger died?
is it so they can turn up at the next of kins and say “well we had to close the motorway as a sign of respect and thousands of motorists were inconvenienced as a result with the cost to industry being in the hundreds of thousands - i thought that would help you get over it”.
Granted the police take a long time and maybe could do things a little quicker,but they have to collect as much evidence as possible at the time for any possible prosecution.They video and photograph the debris field,any points of impact and skidmarks(but only the ones on the road!!!).All this info is then fed into a computer and they can then recreate the accident onscreen.
A truck-driver friend of mine was involved in a fatal accident on the A9(not his fault),and he thought it was a good system.Within 2 days the police asked him to view the re-creation and he said it was just as the accident happened.It showed that he was in no way to blame for the accident,so saved an unnecessary(and possibly unfair) prosecution.Surely thats a good thing?
Went up the M1, past the accident scene at 0545, and the vehicle was on its side on the tarmac then. There were two police cars and a wrecker truck in attendance. Carried on to Leeds, tipped, reloaded in Goole, and thought it would all be cleared by the time I got back. WRONG !!!
Came off the M18 onto the A1, along with the world and his wife, and eventually took 4hours 15 mins, to do a run that took 2 hours 45 on monday.
Me not a happy bunny, but can understand the need for accident investigation to be done at the scene, and not several weeks later in an office somewhere.
Such is life.
Hope the driver came out of it ok.
i can see why they have to investigate the scene and accrue evidence when it’s a fatality or a seriouse injury but it’s getting so a minor shunt on the motorway takes forever to clear, sure the police are there quick enough but seem on most occasions totally powerless to even shift a mini with the front end damaged out of the way! all that said there was another smash today this time north bound going into the same road works, so i’m sure the police would blame brain dead drivers for simply not slowing down which would be fair comment.
Did anyone get stuck in the tailback from the crashed wagon on the M60 today? ■■■■■■■ hell, I went past at around 11.30am and it was queued from the accident site (between the M61 and Prestwich J17) back past the Warrington turn off the M62! One lane of four open, with several police vehicles and wreckers in attendance.
Unfortunately we live in a ‘blame society.’ All fatal and potentiall fatal collision scenes now have to be treated as a ‘murder’ scene and all available evidence gathered. The biggest problem is the large number of ‘no win, no fee’ type operations who will suggest to families that there may be money at the end of the tunnel, if only they sign the form for claiming legal expenses. If the Police cannot provide every scrap of information to these companies, the Police force is then facing accusations of improper practice. The Police loose, the family loose, we loose (cos we’re stuck in the queue), the poor sod in the vehicle loses (cos their dead or nearly dead) but the lawyers win every time…Apologies, rant over.
geebee45:
Unfortunately we live in a ‘blame society.’ All fatal and potentiall fatal collision scenes now have to be treated as a ‘murder’ scene and all available evidence gathered.
And because fatal accidents are treated as crimes of murder, the 100% clear up rate improves the poor overall clear up rate for all murders.
More M1 chaos today. Don’t know whether any of you heard on the travel news today about the M1 n/bound being closed from J1 to J5?
I had a tip at the new Wembley Stadium today and so ran southbound past the scene. All I saw was some plod and cleanup crew looking at a bent section of barrier on the J5 exit slip. There was no other activity at all on the section down to J1 but it was still closed and remained closed for another 2 hours. Meanwhile A41, A406 and A1 were all gridlocked 
Dont know what the reason was.
Calv