Odd police behaviour

[dieseluser07]

Had a strange occurance today and wondered if anyone has an idea what they were trying to achieve.

I pulled onto a dual carriageway from a roundabout, a police car also pulls onto it (no flashing lights at this point) and bombs past in the right lane and overtakes me and one other car then waits til the last minute to pull inbetween the car in front of me and the car in front of them (the 2 lanes went down to 1 at this point)

Police car then puts lights on and overtakes the front car. Then proceeds to drive at 20mph in the LEFT lane, other car stays behind the police car, im in the right lane and as the police car is only in the left lane i start to slowly accelerate in the right lane to get passed, as im coming up to overtake the police car swervs into my lane last minute to stop me getting past.

The police car then drives in the middle of the 2 lanes for 2 minutes so we just kept behind. Then they turn their lights off and slowly speed up and just continue driving in the left lane so i overtake in the right and thats it.

There was no crashes or anything, any ideas? Cop car had cameras on the back and front.

[TooMany2cvs]

Sounds like a rolling roadblock - slowing the traffic right down, so that something ahead can be cleared before you get there. Maybe a roadwork vehicle dragging some debris out of the road.

[TriumphStag3.0V8]

Yep, as above, pretty standard rolling roadblock. Likely so that something could be safely retrieved from the road that would otherwise have been a hazard. By the time you get to where it was, it will be gone.

Normally if a big crash the police car will put on a rolling block and then actually stop the traffic. Was the first car at a full block once (rolling, then stopped) due to a major crash on the M6. Air ambulance landed on carriageway in front of us etc. Was there for about 20 mins before the road re-opened. I was the first car down a completely empty motorway :-)

[Greendubber]

Colleagues up the road moving something would be my bet.

Don't worry about it.

[donkmeister]

dieseluser07 said:

Cop car had cameras on the back and front.

Dashcam Warrior!!! It'll be all over YouTube now.

[HantsRat]

Rolling road block to clear something ahead. Probably conduct at least one per shift so very common. Highways England also perform them quite often on main routes.

[T5R+]

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

OP rightly could have assumed that the Police car was "pulling" the vehicle directly in front of him/her and so legitimately pass.

[Greendubber]

T5R+ said:

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

OP rightly could have assumed that the Police car was "pulling" the vehicle directly in front of him/her and so legitimately pass.

I don't think anyone on here has the power to read the mind of the officer driving it but you might get lucky.

[pavarotti1980]

T5R+ said:

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

OP rightly could have assumed that the Police car was "pulling" the vehicle directly in front of him/her and so legitimately pass.

Maybe they had the matrix sign displayed saying do not pass to nulify the potential fkwittery

[Red 4]

T5R+ said:

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

.

[dieseluser07]

pavarotti1980 said:

T5R+ said:

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

OP rightly could have assumed that the Police car was "pulling" the vehicle directly in front of him/her and so legitimately pass.

Maybe they had the matrix sign displayed saying do not pass to nulify the potential fkwittery

They had nothing displayed hence why i tried to overtake im not stupid he should have been straddling both lanes from the start.

And like i said there was literally nothing on the motorway anyway, no other police cars or anything or rubbish or highways maintenance.

[Kateg28]

TriumphStag3.0V8 said:

<snip> Was the first car at a full block once (rolling, then stopped) due to a major crash on the M6. Air ambulance landed on carriageway in front of us etc. Was there for about 20 mins before the road re-opened. I was the first car down a completely empty motorway :-)

I was the last car in front of a rolling road block on the M25 last year so I was watching a wall of traffic recede into the distance whilst I carried on. It was very spooky and I never found out why it was all stopped.
I did watch the police car manoeuvre into position but it never went onto blue lights until I was ahead of it.

[Greendubber]

dieseluser07 said:

pavarotti1980 said:

T5R+ said:

Anyone care to explain why the Police car did not straddle both lanes much earlier ie so that OP did not "feel" that s/he may pass in the right hand lane.

OP rightly could have assumed that the Police car was "pulling" the vehicle directly in front of him/her and so legitimately pass.

Maybe they had the matrix sign displayed saying do not pass to nulify the potential fkwittery

They had nothing displayed hence why i tried to overtake im not stupid he should have been straddling both lanes from the start.

And like i said there was literally nothing on the motorway anyway, no other police cars or anything or rubbish or highways maintenance.

Could have been a massive chunk of lorry tyre which was simply chucked on the back seat of a traffic car.

There really isn't anything unusual about this situation at all.

[HantsRat]

dieseluser07 said:

And like i said there was literally nothing on the motorway anyway, no other police cars or anything or rubbish or highways maintenance.

Don't you think any debris could have been cleared before you got to the scene? Hence the rolling road block.

[john2443]

dieseluser07 said:

And like i said there was literally nothing on the motorway anyway, no other police cars or anything or rubbish or highways maintenance.

Whatever it was could have been somewhere in the distance, out of sight - by the time you got there it could have been cleared up and gone.

[dieseluser07]

Fair enough guys thanks for the help, guess it was a rolling road block&#128077;&#128077;

[BertBert]

Perhaps a rolling road block?

[T5R+]

Lit up car groups followers by not allowing them to pass and gradually brings down speed to keep traffic moving at a low pace rather than stopping all.

Watching a single car "herd" 3 lanes of fast moving motorway traffic is pretty good.

[roadsmash]

Aliens.

[Pica-Pica]

It happened to me a year or two ago on the A55. Police car zoomed out of a side junction and gradually slowed us all down to a stop. Reason was to stop our carriageway to let an air ambulance land to assist an accident on the other carriageway. All done very professionally. I am sure it displayed a rear matrix sign, either ‘DO NOT PASS’ or ‘SLOW DOWN’ or maybe both in their turn. I remember it was all very clear.