views from a BiB
Discussion
Have a read of this if you have 5 mins. (It's not been written by myself, I must add).
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When you have worked almost all of your police service on the Traffic patrol department you often get asked questions about your experiences in the job. As soon as someone at a party, or other social encounter, learns what it is that you do for a living you get what seems at times like a well-rehearsed repertoire of enquiries. “What is the fastest you have ever driven?” is a fairly regular one, as is the one about how many car chases have I been in? What modifications are made to the cars? Don’t you find motorways boring? Why were there three police cars at junction 24 of the M6 last Friday at around lunchtime? These are all enquiries that stem from a genuine fascination of what seems to be for most people a mystical world of secret working, of which they have very little comprehension. You always know that when you get the one asking how many people you have nicked for speeding that the enquirer is not enquiring at all, at least not through genuine interest, but merely squaring up for a ‘let’s knock the old bill’ session. These narrow-minded people I merely treat with contempt because if that is all they think a traffic cop does each and every day of their working lives then they need to get themselves better educated.
Out of all the questions that I get asked about working as a traffic police officer the, “I bet you have seen some horrible sights haven’t you?” is common and “What is the worst accident you have been to?” rates very high on the popular curios chart.
In a period spanning nearly twenty-years I have attended hundreds of road crashes, ranging from minor damage-only knocks to multiple pile-ups, some resulting in no injury and others there have been many deaths. Every road collision is a serious event, regardless of its outcome. Even one that results in minor damage has all the potential for taking a life, given slightly different circumstances, but to answer the question of what is the worst accident I have been to would be very difficult. I have been to reported minor damage collisions and found upon arrival that the scene is one of absolute carnage. I have been sent to others that have been reported as serious injury, even possibly fatal, and found the worst casualty had no more then a cut finger. Ask me which one out of all the accidents I have attended had the most effect upon me personally, then I would say that question does narrow it down a bit and make the task of providing an answer slightly less difficult.
Many of the accidents that I have attended have affected me in one way or another, but the one I want to talk about now sticks in my mind quite vividly, not because there were a great number of vehicles involved, not because someone died in my arms, but because very little of what took place that night followed any line of normal expectation – expectation based upon common logic or that mirrored any pervious experience. I would even go as far as to say that a great deal of what happened that night was even quite bazaar.
It was a November late shift in 1992, and I was working a motorway duty with Tariq, a close and respected crewmate and friend. We had worked together for a couple of years and had got to know each other pretty well, even to the extent of each others little foibles and habits. It was a miserable night, with heavy rain teaming down, a blustery wind and a whole pile of quality jobs that kept coming in relentlessly one after another. When I say quality jobs I say it with sarcasm. There was the usual task of closing lane-one to protect a tyre fitter changing the off-side wheel of a heavy goods vehicle on the hard shoulder, removing debris from the carriageway, removing the pedestrian thumbing it along the hard shoulder, checking on the welfare of a lone female motorist awaiting the RAC and dealing with the tarpaulin blown from a lorry that was now fluttering its way across all six lanes threatening to cause complete mayhem and consternation.
Having started shift at 3pm we hadn’t stopped all afternoon and every single job seemed to necessitate us both getting soaked to the skin despite the wet-weather gear we were wearing. However, at around 8.30 there came a window of opportunity, the chance to have something to eat and as we were at that time close to junction 5 the local village chip-shop seemed a welcome oasis from where to grab something warm and fulfilling.
“Janet will shoot you if she knew you were eating chips” I quipped at Tariq as we made a dash from the shop door to the car, trying not to let the teeming rain get to the paper packets we were carrying. Tariq and his wife were on a healthy eating campaign and she had charged me with the responsibility to keep her informed as to her husbands eating habits when out of her sight, only light-heartedly of course. However, it provided a source of amusement for when we met as she would playfully rebuke him for his indiscretions having been supplied the necessary incriminating evidence from me. “Bloody weather!” he cursed as we simultaneously slammed our doors shut and began ferreting in the chip-wrappers. “Did Janet give you a packed lunch today”? “Yeah,” he nodded and cocked his head towards the rear foot well where he had earlier placed his holdall. “Salad!” he coughed with his mouth full of fish.
Three or four mouthfuls into our food and the radio summoned us. “HB receiving Tango-Alpha Nine-One, Tango-Alpha Nine-one.” Tariq hastily wiped his fingers on a damp paper serviette and picked up the hand-set. “Tango-Alphe Nine-One, at junction five, go ahead.” He replied. I was thinking rather crossly at that time that you just manage two minutes to get away from the motorway and as soon as you fill your mouth with food, something happens. Well, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined. “Tango-Alpha Nine-One, eight seven thee zero on the alpha, report of vehicle having left the carriageway.” “Roger, HB. En-route.” Tariq answered. “Bloody typical! How do they do it? he said. They drive on an almost dead-straight piece of road and yet they still manage to fall off it.” I laughed at his outburst and suggest he calm down lest he get indigestion.
When you work a motorway for a long time you get to know it and I don’t mean you get to know it like the commuter who drives it there and back every day, to and from work. I mean you really get to know it. Every wrinkle, ripple, crack and bump better than the back your own back garden. You know the elevated section, and how the wind can cut across the valley and freeze your nads off as soon as you step out of the car, the weird weather systems that develop between junctions five and six – a location where I had experienced brilliant sunshine, pouring rain and settling snow all that the same time and within a quarter of a mile. You also knew the areas where crashes were most common and with each location, what the probable cause would be. In wet weather certain areas would collect standing water because the road-makers had not put enough camber on the road when they built it, and the places where the road-camber reverses causing rain-water to run in a stream from the central reservation and the hard-shoulder.
The location given by the radio operator was a marker post number and from my intimate knowledge of the road I knew this to be at Manor Farm over-bridge, about a mile and a half prior to junction seven. I also knew this was not one of the more usual places where collisions occurred. “Aqua-planing I expect.” I gawffed, trying to cram as many chips as possible into my mouth before making for the scene. “Driving too fast in these conditions and has gone over the brow and caught that wet bit just before the bridge.” Daft isn’t it? On that night there would hardly be a dry bit would there, and yet both Tariq and I both knew exactly what I meant?
The distance from the chip shop to the scene was around eight miles, and under good conditions it would take around four minutes in a 3-litre Vauxhall Senator to get there, but these were not good conditions. I was all too aware of the risk of aqua-planing, and the worst thing that can ever happen to a traffic patrol officer is to become involved in an accident himself whilst trying to get to one he is responding to. It is in times like these much of your success comes down to rigorous self-discipline and high quality, intense driver training.
As I joined the Northbound carriageway at junction five, with the windscreen wipers at double-speed barely able to cope with the amount of rain hitting the glass, I noted that the volume of traffic had subsided somewhat since our departure from the ‘slab’ some twenty-minutes or so earlier. Had it not been for the weather we could have made very good progress. I had often been over the top of junction six at 150mph, but this was not the night to try that one again. Indeed, just after junction six, a stream runs across the road when it rains hard where there is a camber-switch. This is a real trap for those who do not drive in a cautious manner in these adverse weather conditions and I knew it well. Even at my speed of 80mph that night the car expressed its displeasure as I went through.
As we neared the location I steered gently to the hard shoulder and slowed to a crawl, whilst Tariq notified the control room that we were at the location given. Working on the motorway you would often be given inaccurate information about where incidents had happened, not because the control room staff didn’t know what they were doing, but because they were dealing with someone on the telephone who would be in a shocked and confused state, which made it very difficult sometimes to get from them precise details of the where the problem was – or where they were at the time. I know this because I have also performed that role of control room operator and it is very taxing at times. Experience had taught me to slow right down well before a given location of an incident, and then to move in slowly so as to not get tangled up in it or to miss it altogether.
I remember being with a newcomer to the department once, a lad who thought he knew it all barrelling along the motorway in search of a railway sleeper that was reported to be in the carriageway. Despite my best advice for him to slow as we neared the area, he kept right on going. “Where is the bloody thing then?” he exclaimed, which neatly coincided with the point where we practically left both axles on the road behind us. “That’ll be it then!” I remember saying. He didn’t so that again, at least not with me in the car.
The location given for the incident Tariq and I were attending was spot-on and as we passed under Manor Farm over-bridge I saw there was a white Ford Sierra Sapphire, picked out in the headlights and positioned at ninety-degrees to the carriageway. Its rear-end was on the hard-shoulder and its front through the Armco barrier that separated the hard-shoulder from a tarmac apron in front of a brick building that housed the wizardry for the motorway telephones and matrix signals. I remember driving very slowly passed the car and looking for any sign of the occupant, or occupants, in the light of the ally lights fitted to the ends of the police roof-bar. I could see that generally the car was only slightly damaged at the front, a normally reassuring sign that no one had come to any serious harm.
The Sierra had gone through the line of the barrier about half and half, with what appeared to be the end of one of the barrier sections butting up to the centre area of the drivers’ door panel. This was strange-happening number one. How had the car managed to penetrate the barrier, a galvanised steel structure that is designed to withstand fantastic amounts of force without being breached? These barriers, in either the box-section or corrugated design, were built in sections that were either seam-welded or bolted together, and with closely spaced upright legs providing support. Yet this one had somehow failed.
Flicking the headlights up onto full-beam I squinted through the glass of the rain-drenched windscreen towards where I knew to be the nearest SOS phone, looking for any sign of anyone on foot perhaps walking on that unlit and so very dark motorway. “Call them up and ask if the driver has phoned in from the box?” I asked Tariq. “I’ll go and have a look at the car.” I heard him on the radio as I left the vehicle and made my way around the back of it towards the Sierra. As I approached I shone my torch at the drivers’ door and noted that the glass was either wound-down or missing altogether. Given the lack of substantial damage I assumed the window has been wound down. People would often leave their cars and walk off in these circumstances, either to go to the motorway phone or to the nearest sign of habitation in search of a telephone. As the barrier end was up against the door it seemed logical that someone had got out by way of the window, leaving it open following their exit. Sometimes, if they had perhaps had too many sherbets or had something else to hide, they would disappear altogether being prepared to lose their car and contents rather than to be found by the law. This Sierra seemed to be an unoccupied vehicle, and yet was that a groan I just heard?
Still advancing upon it I cocked my head to one side, straining my ears for the sound, if there had been one, to repeat itself. As I got within arms reach I heard it again, a pitiful and feeble groan. Shining the torch through the open window there was a man sitting in the drivers’ seat with his head resting back against the head restraint. “Are you alright mate?” I said in my usual jovial approach, despite the miserable weather and the memory of the lukewarm fish and chips that were somewhere in the back of the patrol car getting even colder. I shone the torch at his face and noticed how ashen the pallor of his skin appeared. “It’s m’ mate” he groaned, “His legs have gone.” Switching my torch beam from the drivers’ face to the same area of the passenger side of the car I saw there was a second man sitting there. Peering in I said cheerfully, “You alright there?” As I looked at him he seemed pathetically weak and barely managed to utter the words, “My legs.” Upon shining the torch downward I was met with a scene that I will never forget as long as I will live.
The crash-barrier, through which the car had penetrated, did not have it’s un-jointed end resting up against the outer door-skin of the drivers’ door, but had cleanly penetrated it and was in fact resting up against the interior lining of the passenger door. Not only that but it had, except for a small amount of sinew, severed four human legs from the torso’s of the two men in that car. The foot-wells were filled with blood, like two large puddles of ankle deep red paint with more was being added every second, pumping from damaged arteries that were concealed from me by this massive intrusion invading the car. The trouble was I could not get to any pressure points on either of their bodies to stem the bleeding as the barrier was obstructing all access.
After quickly assessing the situation I ran back to the car, pulled the door open and said to Tariq, “Get onto to HB. Tell them we need a full medical team here with a field theatre - and the fire service! That barrier has gone right through the car and taken off four legs. There are two guys trapped in there!” I didn’t wait for a reply, but slammed the door shut and ran back to the Sierra.
What can you do in that situation? There you are with these two people who you know are going to die very quickly unless someone can do something soon to help them, and they see you there as a person in uniform that is going to be their saviour. The sickening feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me was exacerbated by the fact that I knew the nearest ambulance station and hospital were some ten miles further north, and those that would come to help would have to travel passed the scene on the opposing carriageway before turning at the next junction to come back. All you can do is talk – talk about anything and everything to try and keep these people as calm as possible and to try and comfort them in their state of terror.
Well I talked all right, and for what seemed like an absolute eternity. Even after the first ambulance had passed by on the opposite carriageway it seemed like a year and a day before it got back to the scene. It was mentally draining.
What happened over the next few hours was almost unbelievable. We had the northbound carriageway closed to traffic, four ambulances, several fire tenders, police vehicles all over the place together with private cars that had been driven by medical staff, and the senior fire officer. Seeing the surgeons and theatre staff walking around on a rain swept motorway dressed in their green gowns and clog theatre shoes was really quite a bazaar sight. There were people everywhere and yet everyone seemed to be doing something. The fire service were in there and the roof of the car was cut off, people were fetching and carrying supplies and equipment and orders were being shouted to anyone who was in a position to do whatever was required regardless of which organisation they belonged to. Lighting was a problem and I had turned the patrol car around so that it was facing back at the scene illuminating the Sierra with the headlights. I wish I had been equipped with a camera, not through any warped and twisted sense of satisfaction at being there, but because no amount of words that I can write here will tell you what that scene looked like.
I remember at one point sitting in the driving seat of the patrol car watching a fire fighter with a nine-inch angle-grinder attempt to cut through the steel barrier. Even with my doors and windows closed, and above the noise of the generators and other engines, I could here the screams of one of the occupants of the Sierra as the vibration was transmitted along the steel into his torn body. I don’t know if some form of anaesthetic was administered, but a few minutes later it was tried again, this time without the cries. I was horrified as I saw the showers of sparks streaming from the spinning disc of the grinder spraying all over the area of the fuel filler of the car from where the filler cap was missing! I jumped out, ran across and tapped the man on the shoulder so as to stop him from using the machine. The tap turned to a thump when he did not initially react, but it stopped the nightmare from becoming worse.
Eventually the task was completed in safety. At one point I looked closely at the drivers door of that car and was amazed, as I still am, how the end of that barrier had penetrated the metal so cleanly that the panel was not even dented or distorted. It was as if someone had pushed a knife into a block of butter.
For over two-hours the emergency crews worked on those two people, relentlessly trying to get them free and even performing surgical operations through the windows of the stricken vehicle. I took my turn with many others standing with my arms in the air suspending a saline solution and plasma bags that were giving the two men a slightly extended chance of survival. To try and keep out the rain we had rigged up a polythene sheet on four poles over the car and over the medical staff, which did provide a slightly better working environment for them.
Eventually the two men were freed and a cheer went up as each man was lifted by stretcher into a waiting ambulance before being whisked away to hospital. With the casualties gone everyone just seemed to stand there looking stunned, I suppose trying to take in what had just taken place as they had not given the time to consider it whilst it was actually happening. Slowly the clear-up task began, packing away equipment, tidying up packaging that once contained various items of surgical equipment and searching the car for any items of value for later return to the injured parties, or perhaps their bereaved relatives. Once everyone had gone an eerie silence befell the scene as I was left alone to await the recovery vehicle that would take the Sierra away. Tariq had been driven to the hospital by a colleague so as to commence the task of finding out who these two men were and to set about the task of having their families informed.
When I later caught up with him there I found it almost impossible to believe what I had happened. Apparently, the two men were Jehovah’s witnesses and somehow by the time the casualties had arrived at the hospital there was a reception committee of others from the faith, and who proceeded to stand guard over the two men everywhere they went to make sure that no one administered blood to them. The unbelievable part of this was how these people knew? The two men in the car did not have mobile phones, there were no other occupants in the vehicle at the time of the crash that vehicle was not travelling in convoy with any other. I never did get to the bottom of that one, and I guess I never will.
Miraculously one of the two men survived, but both had lost both legs. Tariq and I went to see him at the hospital a few weeks later and during the conversation I managed to speak with the man about his faith. Whilst I admired his conviction to his religion I couldn’t help feel angry about how so many people had given everything they could give to try and save the two lives and yet the two lives would not do anything to help save themselves. However, as a police officer you have to remain professional and impartial and that is what I did – on the outside anyway.
It transpired that I was right. The Sierra had been travelling very fast along the road, hit some surface water and had aquaplaned. The vehicle had veered out of control and gone nose first across the hard-shoulder into the near-side crash barrier. As the car had been travelling up the carriageway when things started to go wrong, even though its course changed slightly, the forward momentum was still there. With the vehicle gyrating anti-clockwise it went through the barrier with the leading side, the drivers’ side, becoming impaled on the steel, skewering itself on this large rigid prong that should have been, but was not, affixed to the section next to it in line.
The final twist to this story is that when the highways authority carried out a meticulous examination of all the barrier sections along that road, the survey being as a result of this particular incident, it was found that in many hundreds of barrier miles this was the only joint that had not been secured. How is it that two people could be in a car that lost control and crashed in exactly the same place at the one and only barrier joint that had not been welded, and how did those other Jehovah’s witnesses, and so many of them, know to go to the hospital to ‘protect’ one of their own kind? If you try to analyse this too much it could be bad for your health, and your mind could begin to imagine all sorts of fantastic scenarios. Those things are perhaps best left alone.
I said at the beginning of this article that I would describe an accident that had the greatest effect upon me, and this is perhaps the number-one example. I have made it that choice because it was an incident that contained so many factors that should not have been there. This should have been a case of finding an embarrassed driver walking back from the SOS motorway phone, with their car stuck undamaged halfway up an embankment – just like so many before and so many after that night. Indeed, had that Sierra travelled another ten feet it would have cleared the end of the barrier and would have made this exactly the type of accident it was supposed to have been. It was the way in which this one was disguised that made it so traumatic.
Street
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When you have worked almost all of your police service on the Traffic patrol department you often get asked questions about your experiences in the job. As soon as someone at a party, or other social encounter, learns what it is that you do for a living you get what seems at times like a well-rehearsed repertoire of enquiries. “What is the fastest you have ever driven?” is a fairly regular one, as is the one about how many car chases have I been in? What modifications are made to the cars? Don’t you find motorways boring? Why were there three police cars at junction 24 of the M6 last Friday at around lunchtime? These are all enquiries that stem from a genuine fascination of what seems to be for most people a mystical world of secret working, of which they have very little comprehension. You always know that when you get the one asking how many people you have nicked for speeding that the enquirer is not enquiring at all, at least not through genuine interest, but merely squaring up for a ‘let’s knock the old bill’ session. These narrow-minded people I merely treat with contempt because if that is all they think a traffic cop does each and every day of their working lives then they need to get themselves better educated.
Out of all the questions that I get asked about working as a traffic police officer the, “I bet you have seen some horrible sights haven’t you?” is common and “What is the worst accident you have been to?” rates very high on the popular curios chart.
In a period spanning nearly twenty-years I have attended hundreds of road crashes, ranging from minor damage-only knocks to multiple pile-ups, some resulting in no injury and others there have been many deaths. Every road collision is a serious event, regardless of its outcome. Even one that results in minor damage has all the potential for taking a life, given slightly different circumstances, but to answer the question of what is the worst accident I have been to would be very difficult. I have been to reported minor damage collisions and found upon arrival that the scene is one of absolute carnage. I have been sent to others that have been reported as serious injury, even possibly fatal, and found the worst casualty had no more then a cut finger. Ask me which one out of all the accidents I have attended had the most effect upon me personally, then I would say that question does narrow it down a bit and make the task of providing an answer slightly less difficult.
Many of the accidents that I have attended have affected me in one way or another, but the one I want to talk about now sticks in my mind quite vividly, not because there were a great number of vehicles involved, not because someone died in my arms, but because very little of what took place that night followed any line of normal expectation – expectation based upon common logic or that mirrored any pervious experience. I would even go as far as to say that a great deal of what happened that night was even quite bazaar.
It was a November late shift in 1992, and I was working a motorway duty with Tariq, a close and respected crewmate and friend. We had worked together for a couple of years and had got to know each other pretty well, even to the extent of each others little foibles and habits. It was a miserable night, with heavy rain teaming down, a blustery wind and a whole pile of quality jobs that kept coming in relentlessly one after another. When I say quality jobs I say it with sarcasm. There was the usual task of closing lane-one to protect a tyre fitter changing the off-side wheel of a heavy goods vehicle on the hard shoulder, removing debris from the carriageway, removing the pedestrian thumbing it along the hard shoulder, checking on the welfare of a lone female motorist awaiting the RAC and dealing with the tarpaulin blown from a lorry that was now fluttering its way across all six lanes threatening to cause complete mayhem and consternation.
Having started shift at 3pm we hadn’t stopped all afternoon and every single job seemed to necessitate us both getting soaked to the skin despite the wet-weather gear we were wearing. However, at around 8.30 there came a window of opportunity, the chance to have something to eat and as we were at that time close to junction 5 the local village chip-shop seemed a welcome oasis from where to grab something warm and fulfilling.
“Janet will shoot you if she knew you were eating chips” I quipped at Tariq as we made a dash from the shop door to the car, trying not to let the teeming rain get to the paper packets we were carrying. Tariq and his wife were on a healthy eating campaign and she had charged me with the responsibility to keep her informed as to her husbands eating habits when out of her sight, only light-heartedly of course. However, it provided a source of amusement for when we met as she would playfully rebuke him for his indiscretions having been supplied the necessary incriminating evidence from me. “Bloody weather!” he cursed as we simultaneously slammed our doors shut and began ferreting in the chip-wrappers. “Did Janet give you a packed lunch today”? “Yeah,” he nodded and cocked his head towards the rear foot well where he had earlier placed his holdall. “Salad!” he coughed with his mouth full of fish.
Three or four mouthfuls into our food and the radio summoned us. “HB receiving Tango-Alpha Nine-One, Tango-Alpha Nine-one.” Tariq hastily wiped his fingers on a damp paper serviette and picked up the hand-set. “Tango-Alphe Nine-One, at junction five, go ahead.” He replied. I was thinking rather crossly at that time that you just manage two minutes to get away from the motorway and as soon as you fill your mouth with food, something happens. Well, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined. “Tango-Alpha Nine-One, eight seven thee zero on the alpha, report of vehicle having left the carriageway.” “Roger, HB. En-route.” Tariq answered. “Bloody typical! How do they do it? he said. They drive on an almost dead-straight piece of road and yet they still manage to fall off it.” I laughed at his outburst and suggest he calm down lest he get indigestion.
When you work a motorway for a long time you get to know it and I don’t mean you get to know it like the commuter who drives it there and back every day, to and from work. I mean you really get to know it. Every wrinkle, ripple, crack and bump better than the back your own back garden. You know the elevated section, and how the wind can cut across the valley and freeze your nads off as soon as you step out of the car, the weird weather systems that develop between junctions five and six – a location where I had experienced brilliant sunshine, pouring rain and settling snow all that the same time and within a quarter of a mile. You also knew the areas where crashes were most common and with each location, what the probable cause would be. In wet weather certain areas would collect standing water because the road-makers had not put enough camber on the road when they built it, and the places where the road-camber reverses causing rain-water to run in a stream from the central reservation and the hard-shoulder.
The location given by the radio operator was a marker post number and from my intimate knowledge of the road I knew this to be at Manor Farm over-bridge, about a mile and a half prior to junction seven. I also knew this was not one of the more usual places where collisions occurred. “Aqua-planing I expect.” I gawffed, trying to cram as many chips as possible into my mouth before making for the scene. “Driving too fast in these conditions and has gone over the brow and caught that wet bit just before the bridge.” Daft isn’t it? On that night there would hardly be a dry bit would there, and yet both Tariq and I both knew exactly what I meant?
The distance from the chip shop to the scene was around eight miles, and under good conditions it would take around four minutes in a 3-litre Vauxhall Senator to get there, but these were not good conditions. I was all too aware of the risk of aqua-planing, and the worst thing that can ever happen to a traffic patrol officer is to become involved in an accident himself whilst trying to get to one he is responding to. It is in times like these much of your success comes down to rigorous self-discipline and high quality, intense driver training.
As I joined the Northbound carriageway at junction five, with the windscreen wipers at double-speed barely able to cope with the amount of rain hitting the glass, I noted that the volume of traffic had subsided somewhat since our departure from the ‘slab’ some twenty-minutes or so earlier. Had it not been for the weather we could have made very good progress. I had often been over the top of junction six at 150mph, but this was not the night to try that one again. Indeed, just after junction six, a stream runs across the road when it rains hard where there is a camber-switch. This is a real trap for those who do not drive in a cautious manner in these adverse weather conditions and I knew it well. Even at my speed of 80mph that night the car expressed its displeasure as I went through.
As we neared the location I steered gently to the hard shoulder and slowed to a crawl, whilst Tariq notified the control room that we were at the location given. Working on the motorway you would often be given inaccurate information about where incidents had happened, not because the control room staff didn’t know what they were doing, but because they were dealing with someone on the telephone who would be in a shocked and confused state, which made it very difficult sometimes to get from them precise details of the where the problem was – or where they were at the time. I know this because I have also performed that role of control room operator and it is very taxing at times. Experience had taught me to slow right down well before a given location of an incident, and then to move in slowly so as to not get tangled up in it or to miss it altogether.
I remember being with a newcomer to the department once, a lad who thought he knew it all barrelling along the motorway in search of a railway sleeper that was reported to be in the carriageway. Despite my best advice for him to slow as we neared the area, he kept right on going. “Where is the bloody thing then?” he exclaimed, which neatly coincided with the point where we practically left both axles on the road behind us. “That’ll be it then!” I remember saying. He didn’t so that again, at least not with me in the car.
The location given for the incident Tariq and I were attending was spot-on and as we passed under Manor Farm over-bridge I saw there was a white Ford Sierra Sapphire, picked out in the headlights and positioned at ninety-degrees to the carriageway. Its rear-end was on the hard-shoulder and its front through the Armco barrier that separated the hard-shoulder from a tarmac apron in front of a brick building that housed the wizardry for the motorway telephones and matrix signals. I remember driving very slowly passed the car and looking for any sign of the occupant, or occupants, in the light of the ally lights fitted to the ends of the police roof-bar. I could see that generally the car was only slightly damaged at the front, a normally reassuring sign that no one had come to any serious harm.
The Sierra had gone through the line of the barrier about half and half, with what appeared to be the end of one of the barrier sections butting up to the centre area of the drivers’ door panel. This was strange-happening number one. How had the car managed to penetrate the barrier, a galvanised steel structure that is designed to withstand fantastic amounts of force without being breached? These barriers, in either the box-section or corrugated design, were built in sections that were either seam-welded or bolted together, and with closely spaced upright legs providing support. Yet this one had somehow failed.
Flicking the headlights up onto full-beam I squinted through the glass of the rain-drenched windscreen towards where I knew to be the nearest SOS phone, looking for any sign of anyone on foot perhaps walking on that unlit and so very dark motorway. “Call them up and ask if the driver has phoned in from the box?” I asked Tariq. “I’ll go and have a look at the car.” I heard him on the radio as I left the vehicle and made my way around the back of it towards the Sierra. As I approached I shone my torch at the drivers’ door and noted that the glass was either wound-down or missing altogether. Given the lack of substantial damage I assumed the window has been wound down. People would often leave their cars and walk off in these circumstances, either to go to the motorway phone or to the nearest sign of habitation in search of a telephone. As the barrier end was up against the door it seemed logical that someone had got out by way of the window, leaving it open following their exit. Sometimes, if they had perhaps had too many sherbets or had something else to hide, they would disappear altogether being prepared to lose their car and contents rather than to be found by the law. This Sierra seemed to be an unoccupied vehicle, and yet was that a groan I just heard?
Still advancing upon it I cocked my head to one side, straining my ears for the sound, if there had been one, to repeat itself. As I got within arms reach I heard it again, a pitiful and feeble groan. Shining the torch through the open window there was a man sitting in the drivers’ seat with his head resting back against the head restraint. “Are you alright mate?” I said in my usual jovial approach, despite the miserable weather and the memory of the lukewarm fish and chips that were somewhere in the back of the patrol car getting even colder. I shone the torch at his face and noticed how ashen the pallor of his skin appeared. “It’s m’ mate” he groaned, “His legs have gone.” Switching my torch beam from the drivers’ face to the same area of the passenger side of the car I saw there was a second man sitting there. Peering in I said cheerfully, “You alright there?” As I looked at him he seemed pathetically weak and barely managed to utter the words, “My legs.” Upon shining the torch downward I was met with a scene that I will never forget as long as I will live.
The crash-barrier, through which the car had penetrated, did not have it’s un-jointed end resting up against the outer door-skin of the drivers’ door, but had cleanly penetrated it and was in fact resting up against the interior lining of the passenger door. Not only that but it had, except for a small amount of sinew, severed four human legs from the torso’s of the two men in that car. The foot-wells were filled with blood, like two large puddles of ankle deep red paint with more was being added every second, pumping from damaged arteries that were concealed from me by this massive intrusion invading the car. The trouble was I could not get to any pressure points on either of their bodies to stem the bleeding as the barrier was obstructing all access.
After quickly assessing the situation I ran back to the car, pulled the door open and said to Tariq, “Get onto to HB. Tell them we need a full medical team here with a field theatre - and the fire service! That barrier has gone right through the car and taken off four legs. There are two guys trapped in there!” I didn’t wait for a reply, but slammed the door shut and ran back to the Sierra.
What can you do in that situation? There you are with these two people who you know are going to die very quickly unless someone can do something soon to help them, and they see you there as a person in uniform that is going to be their saviour. The sickening feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me was exacerbated by the fact that I knew the nearest ambulance station and hospital were some ten miles further north, and those that would come to help would have to travel passed the scene on the opposing carriageway before turning at the next junction to come back. All you can do is talk – talk about anything and everything to try and keep these people as calm as possible and to try and comfort them in their state of terror.
Well I talked all right, and for what seemed like an absolute eternity. Even after the first ambulance had passed by on the opposite carriageway it seemed like a year and a day before it got back to the scene. It was mentally draining.
What happened over the next few hours was almost unbelievable. We had the northbound carriageway closed to traffic, four ambulances, several fire tenders, police vehicles all over the place together with private cars that had been driven by medical staff, and the senior fire officer. Seeing the surgeons and theatre staff walking around on a rain swept motorway dressed in their green gowns and clog theatre shoes was really quite a bazaar sight. There were people everywhere and yet everyone seemed to be doing something. The fire service were in there and the roof of the car was cut off, people were fetching and carrying supplies and equipment and orders were being shouted to anyone who was in a position to do whatever was required regardless of which organisation they belonged to. Lighting was a problem and I had turned the patrol car around so that it was facing back at the scene illuminating the Sierra with the headlights. I wish I had been equipped with a camera, not through any warped and twisted sense of satisfaction at being there, but because no amount of words that I can write here will tell you what that scene looked like.
I remember at one point sitting in the driving seat of the patrol car watching a fire fighter with a nine-inch angle-grinder attempt to cut through the steel barrier. Even with my doors and windows closed, and above the noise of the generators and other engines, I could here the screams of one of the occupants of the Sierra as the vibration was transmitted along the steel into his torn body. I don’t know if some form of anaesthetic was administered, but a few minutes later it was tried again, this time without the cries. I was horrified as I saw the showers of sparks streaming from the spinning disc of the grinder spraying all over the area of the fuel filler of the car from where the filler cap was missing! I jumped out, ran across and tapped the man on the shoulder so as to stop him from using the machine. The tap turned to a thump when he did not initially react, but it stopped the nightmare from becoming worse.
Eventually the task was completed in safety. At one point I looked closely at the drivers door of that car and was amazed, as I still am, how the end of that barrier had penetrated the metal so cleanly that the panel was not even dented or distorted. It was as if someone had pushed a knife into a block of butter.
For over two-hours the emergency crews worked on those two people, relentlessly trying to get them free and even performing surgical operations through the windows of the stricken vehicle. I took my turn with many others standing with my arms in the air suspending a saline solution and plasma bags that were giving the two men a slightly extended chance of survival. To try and keep out the rain we had rigged up a polythene sheet on four poles over the car and over the medical staff, which did provide a slightly better working environment for them.
Eventually the two men were freed and a cheer went up as each man was lifted by stretcher into a waiting ambulance before being whisked away to hospital. With the casualties gone everyone just seemed to stand there looking stunned, I suppose trying to take in what had just taken place as they had not given the time to consider it whilst it was actually happening. Slowly the clear-up task began, packing away equipment, tidying up packaging that once contained various items of surgical equipment and searching the car for any items of value for later return to the injured parties, or perhaps their bereaved relatives. Once everyone had gone an eerie silence befell the scene as I was left alone to await the recovery vehicle that would take the Sierra away. Tariq had been driven to the hospital by a colleague so as to commence the task of finding out who these two men were and to set about the task of having their families informed.
When I later caught up with him there I found it almost impossible to believe what I had happened. Apparently, the two men were Jehovah’s witnesses and somehow by the time the casualties had arrived at the hospital there was a reception committee of others from the faith, and who proceeded to stand guard over the two men everywhere they went to make sure that no one administered blood to them. The unbelievable part of this was how these people knew? The two men in the car did not have mobile phones, there were no other occupants in the vehicle at the time of the crash that vehicle was not travelling in convoy with any other. I never did get to the bottom of that one, and I guess I never will.
Miraculously one of the two men survived, but both had lost both legs. Tariq and I went to see him at the hospital a few weeks later and during the conversation I managed to speak with the man about his faith. Whilst I admired his conviction to his religion I couldn’t help feel angry about how so many people had given everything they could give to try and save the two lives and yet the two lives would not do anything to help save themselves. However, as a police officer you have to remain professional and impartial and that is what I did – on the outside anyway.
It transpired that I was right. The Sierra had been travelling very fast along the road, hit some surface water and had aquaplaned. The vehicle had veered out of control and gone nose first across the hard-shoulder into the near-side crash barrier. As the car had been travelling up the carriageway when things started to go wrong, even though its course changed slightly, the forward momentum was still there. With the vehicle gyrating anti-clockwise it went through the barrier with the leading side, the drivers’ side, becoming impaled on the steel, skewering itself on this large rigid prong that should have been, but was not, affixed to the section next to it in line.
The final twist to this story is that when the highways authority carried out a meticulous examination of all the barrier sections along that road, the survey being as a result of this particular incident, it was found that in many hundreds of barrier miles this was the only joint that had not been secured. How is it that two people could be in a car that lost control and crashed in exactly the same place at the one and only barrier joint that had not been welded, and how did those other Jehovah’s witnesses, and so many of them, know to go to the hospital to ‘protect’ one of their own kind? If you try to analyse this too much it could be bad for your health, and your mind could begin to imagine all sorts of fantastic scenarios. Those things are perhaps best left alone.
I said at the beginning of this article that I would describe an accident that had the greatest effect upon me, and this is perhaps the number-one example. I have made it that choice because it was an incident that contained so many factors that should not have been there. This should have been a case of finding an embarrassed driver walking back from the SOS motorway phone, with their car stuck undamaged halfway up an embankment – just like so many before and so many after that night. Indeed, had that Sierra travelled another ten feet it would have cleared the end of the barrier and would have made this exactly the type of accident it was supposed to have been. It was the way in which this one was disguised that made it so traumatic.
Street
Glad it's a welcome thread...The forum was very quiet this afternoon, so I thought i'd pop something thought provoking on...
I even opened up the 'Do police cars stop quicker thread', but that just seems to have confused people...
I was waiting to go out to a friend's BBQ this afternoon, so was typing away..
Street
I even opened up the 'Do police cars stop quicker thread', but that just seems to have confused people...
I was waiting to go out to a friend's BBQ this afternoon, so was typing away..
Street
Bit of plagerism here from another site but like the above well worth a glance.
A drunk man in an Oldsmobile
They said had run the light
That caused the six-car pileup
On 109 that night.
When broken bodies lay about
And blood was everywhere,
The sirens screamed out ulogies,
For death was in the air.
A mother, trapped inside her car,
Was heard above the noise;
Her plaintive plea near split the air:
Oh, God, please spare my boys!"
She fought to loose her pinned hands;
She struggled to get free,
But mangled metal held her fast
In grim captivity.
Her frightened eyes then focused
On where the back seat once had been,
But all she saw was broken glass and
Two children's seats crushed in.
Her twins were nowhere to be seen;
She did not hear them cry,
And then she prayed they'd been thrown free,
Oh, God, don't let them die!"
Then firemen came and cut her loose,
But when they searched the back,
They found therein no little boys,
But the seat belts were intact.
They thought the woman had gone mad
And was traveling alone,
But when they turned to question her,
They discovered she was gone.
Policemen saw her running wild
And screaming above the noise
In beseeching supplication,
Please help me find my boys!
They're four years old and wear blue shirts;
Their jeans are blue to match."
One cop spoke up, "They're in my car,
And they don't have a scratch.
They said their daddy put them there
And gave them each a cone,
Then told them both to wait for Mom
To come and take them home.
I've searched the area high and low,
But I can't find their dad.
He must have fled the scene,
I guess, and that is very bad."
The mother hugged the twins and said,
While wiping at a tear,
He could not flee the scene, you see,
For he's been dead a year."
The cop just looked confused and asked,
Now, how can that be true?"
The boys said, "Mommy, Daddy came
And left a kiss for you."
He told us not to worry
And that you would be all right,
And then he put us in this car with
The pretty, flashing light.
We wanted him to stay with us,
Because we miss him so,
But Mommy, he just hugged us tight
And said he had to go.
He said someday we'd understand
And told us not to fuss,
And he said to tell you, Mommy,
He's watching over us."
The mother knew without a doubt
That what they spoke was true,
For she recalled their dad's last words,
I will watch over you."
The firemen's notes could not explain
The twisted, mangled car,
And how the three of them escaped
Without a single scar.
But on the cop's report was scribed,
In print so very fine, An angel walked the beat tonight on
Highway109.
(Inglishg 4 x 4 LRO)
A drunk man in an Oldsmobile
They said had run the light
That caused the six-car pileup
On 109 that night.
When broken bodies lay about
And blood was everywhere,
The sirens screamed out ulogies,
For death was in the air.
A mother, trapped inside her car,
Was heard above the noise;
Her plaintive plea near split the air:
Oh, God, please spare my boys!"
She fought to loose her pinned hands;
She struggled to get free,
But mangled metal held her fast
In grim captivity.
Her frightened eyes then focused
On where the back seat once had been,
But all she saw was broken glass and
Two children's seats crushed in.
Her twins were nowhere to be seen;
She did not hear them cry,
And then she prayed they'd been thrown free,
Oh, God, don't let them die!"
Then firemen came and cut her loose,
But when they searched the back,
They found therein no little boys,
But the seat belts were intact.
They thought the woman had gone mad
And was traveling alone,
But when they turned to question her,
They discovered she was gone.
Policemen saw her running wild
And screaming above the noise
In beseeching supplication,
Please help me find my boys!
They're four years old and wear blue shirts;
Their jeans are blue to match."
One cop spoke up, "They're in my car,
And they don't have a scratch.
They said their daddy put them there
And gave them each a cone,
Then told them both to wait for Mom
To come and take them home.
I've searched the area high and low,
But I can't find their dad.
He must have fled the scene,
I guess, and that is very bad."
The mother hugged the twins and said,
While wiping at a tear,
He could not flee the scene, you see,
For he's been dead a year."
The cop just looked confused and asked,
Now, how can that be true?"
The boys said, "Mommy, Daddy came
And left a kiss for you."
He told us not to worry
And that you would be all right,
And then he put us in this car with
The pretty, flashing light.
We wanted him to stay with us,
Because we miss him so,
But Mommy, he just hugged us tight
And said he had to go.
He said someday we'd understand
And told us not to fuss,
And he said to tell you, Mommy,
He's watching over us."
The mother knew without a doubt
That what they spoke was true,
For she recalled their dad's last words,
I will watch over you."
The firemen's notes could not explain
The twisted, mangled car,
And how the three of them escaped
Without a single scar.
But on the cop's report was scribed,
In print so very fine, An angel walked the beat tonight on
Highway109.
(Inglishg 4 x 4 LRO)
Thought provoking stuff Streetcop. If people used slightly more imagination as to what can happen when things turn bad, then perhaps they wouldn't turn bad so often.
Seeing people driving too fast in the wet scares the poop out of me as they have no control whatsoever when it all gets loose on them.
Seeing people driving too fast in the wet scares the poop out of me as they have no control whatsoever when it all gets loose on them.
very interesting post Street, when you look at all the things that have to coincide for something like this to happen it is indeed mind bogling.
On another topic, do you remember a few days ago we had a slight difference of opinion re the kids telling speeding drivers off for speeding past their school?
well I was talking to a friend (Dr of one of those 'ologies) apparantly there is a name for it, (usual long winded thing) but basically shaming people is indeed a very effective form of punishment and is used extensivly in New Zealand and Australia (something to do with close communities) so I bow to your opinion sir.
Alan
On another topic, do you remember a few days ago we had a slight difference of opinion re the kids telling speeding drivers off for speeding past their school?
well I was talking to a friend (Dr of one of those 'ologies) apparantly there is a name for it, (usual long winded thing) but basically shaming people is indeed a very effective form of punishment and is used extensivly in New Zealand and Australia (something to do with close communities) so I bow to your opinion sir.
Alan
to you also...
alan s said:
On another topic, do you remember a few days ago we had a slight difference of opinion re the kids telling speeding drivers off for speeding past their school?
well I was talking to a friend (Dr of one of those 'ologies) apparantly there is a name for it, (usual long winded thing) but basically shaming people is indeed a very effective form of punishment and is used extensivly in New Zealand and Australia (something to do with close communities) so I bow to your opinion sir.
Alan
They do this in California too. When I was working there you would sometimes see people stood out side stores with signs saying things like
" i mugged someone here for $20 and Im sorry for it" or something like that.
They have to stand there for a couple of days to a week so all the community can walk past them and smirk.
I reckon that punishment would work well.
What an awful story!
And Mike - legs weigh heavy - muscles and blood weigh a lot - especially when a "dead" weight!
Speaking of this particular religious sect - my husband has a few run-ins with them professionally (blood & lurgy specialist) as do the other medics in the family regarding treatments using blood products.
It is no use arguing with them! And they will say that "such things happen for reason which we will only understand when the "new order" (whatever that is) arrives!"
Places our guys in bit of a dilemmna - every time!
But I find it very disturbing to point of freaky that when they have accident - they seem to be frighteningly and freakily more horrible than most. (My own incident was bad - but not on par with what seems to happen to these people.)
I read of one (maybe Dibble has heard of it - even though before his time in Lancs Force.)
Happened on M61 where it merges into M6 northbound about 16 years ago.
Involved a Manchester family of Witness people. The Mama's brother decided to take his little nephews aged 9 and 11 to Blackpool's fun fair in school hols.
Apparently - on the way - a tanker collided with a bridge around this junction - causing a multiple pile up of cars, vans lorries all mangled into one big mess. (Two second rule was ignored - allegedly as all other road conditions were safe - allegedly - and nothing was dodgy - allegedly - but speed (course) played factor on part of tanker - allegedly). It was allegedly one of the worst accidents seen on UK's motorways - with exception of last year's minibus on M56!
Anyway - they cleared the debris and it was during this that they found absolutely pancake flattened blue car which had contained four people at the bottom of the mess -- this family!
Awful and freaky!
And Mike - legs weigh heavy - muscles and blood weigh a lot - especially when a "dead" weight!
Speaking of this particular religious sect - my husband has a few run-ins with them professionally (blood & lurgy specialist) as do the other medics in the family regarding treatments using blood products.
It is no use arguing with them! And they will say that "such things happen for reason which we will only understand when the "new order" (whatever that is) arrives!"
Places our guys in bit of a dilemmna - every time!
But I find it very disturbing to point of freaky that when they have accident - they seem to be frighteningly and freakily more horrible than most. (My own incident was bad - but not on par with what seems to happen to these people.)
I read of one (maybe Dibble has heard of it - even though before his time in Lancs Force.)
Happened on M61 where it merges into M6 northbound about 16 years ago.
Involved a Manchester family of Witness people. The Mama's brother decided to take his little nephews aged 9 and 11 to Blackpool's fun fair in school hols.
Apparently - on the way - a tanker collided with a bridge around this junction - causing a multiple pile up of cars, vans lorries all mangled into one big mess. (Two second rule was ignored - allegedly as all other road conditions were safe - allegedly - and nothing was dodgy - allegedly - but speed (course) played factor on part of tanker - allegedly). It was allegedly one of the worst accidents seen on UK's motorways - with exception of last year's minibus on M56!
Anyway - they cleared the debris and it was during this that they found absolutely pancake flattened blue car which had contained four people at the bottom of the mess -- this family!
Awful and freaky!
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