Accident on A1

[oakdale]

A horrible incident involving several police cars on the A1 early this morning.

https://metro.co.uk/2025/04/09/huge-crash-involvin...

[Earthdweller]

Ouch

Hopefully all involved ok

Looks like a tactical containment that didn't go to plan

[W12GT]

What surprises me is how close the responding vehicles have parked and are actually in the debris. When I was in the Met, this was an absolute no-no due to the high risk of picking up debris and getting a puncture.

Looks a pretty significant incident and would be interested to know how that manifested; purely from that photograph with no other information the car positioning would indicate to me that a boxing in manoeuvre gone wrong. Hopefully no innocents hurt.

[Lotobear]

A1 Western bypass - bad at the best of times, that's going to cause some serious congestion

[oakdale]

The police car up ahead is badly damaged, looks nasty.

[Earthdweller]

W12GT said:

What surprises me is how close the responding vehicles have parked and are actually in the debris. When I was in the Met, this was an absolute no-no due to the high risk of picking up debris and getting a puncture.

Looks a pretty significant incident and would be interested to know how that manifested; purely from that photograph with no other information the car positioning would indicate to me that a boxing in manoeuvre gone wrong. Hopefully no innocents hurt.

The van is a dog unit, it will have been behind the TPAC vehicles during the pursuit and the crew/dogs are likely to have deployed into the scene

Not a surprise

[Patio]

Hope everyone is OK

Somethings gone seriously wrong to write off that many vehicles, from the picture 4 plod and two others(could be unmarked)

[Somewhatfoolish]

Could something have been going the wrong way?

[Tango13]

oakdale said:

The police car up ahead is badly damaged, looks nasty.

Hopefully just the fire brigade taking the roof off as a precaution.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

The thing is, the law is so weak that there is literally no incentive not to get away no matter what. It's not as if they are going to get a harsher sentence for destroying 4 police cars and injuring/killing people.

I wish the police had more power to just stop these cars with a Pit manoeuvre like they do in the states, rather than this whole boxing in rubbish that causes mass pile ups if they don't play ball.

[W12GT]

Earthdweller said:

W12GT said:

What surprises me is how close the responding vehicles have parked and are actually in the debris. When I was in the Met, this was an absolute no-no due to the high risk of picking up debris and getting a puncture.

Looks a pretty significant incident and would be interested to know how that manifested; purely from that photograph with no other information the car positioning would indicate to me that a boxing in manoeuvre gone wrong. Hopefully no innocents hurt.

The van is a dog unit, it will have been behind the TPAC vehicles during the pursuit and the crew/dogs are likely to have deployed into the scene

Not a surprise

The van was almost certainly not part of the accident but may have been following the active incident as it isn’t in all the shots shown, which it would be as part of the investigation. Note it has no obvious damage and is also shown stopped in multiple positions including on the slip road thus suggesting it wasn’t involved in the collision. Therefore it still stopped in the debris and has then moved to other stopping positions, which is bad practice!

Also note that 4no of police vehicles involved - looking from the rear of the accident into the direction of traffic) these would be the Volvo on the right, the BMW in the middle (this has heavy front and rear damage) and the one far ahead with serious front end damage and the roof removed also. These all have obvious damage to outer body and air bags deployed.

The fourth car could potentially be the marked Volvo on the left, however there is no obvious body damage and the airbags do not appear to have been deployed. The black car on its side against the central reservation may have been an unmarked car, a vehicle being pursued or another road user - that has huge back end damage, the front marked car with the roof removed has colossal front end damage, therefore these may have been the original impact (note the lack of serious front end damage to the other marked vehicles).

Without all the facts it’s impossible to know.

The marked BMW in the middle has the most confusing damage being it is furthest back and it’s not obvious how the rear damage could have been sustained because the dark BMW in front has caused the front end damage, but the black car on its side (may be an Audi?) is beyond that crash and it has rear end damage not front - and there would be a lot of front end damage to cause that rear damage on the marked BMW.

Edited by W12GT on Wednesday 9th April 11:30

[Dingu]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

The thing is, the law is so weak that there is literally no incentive not to get away no matter what. It's not as if they are going to get a harsher sentence for destroying 4 police cars and injuring/killing people.

I wish the police had more power to just stop these cars with a Pit manoeuvre like they do in the states, rather than this whole boxing in rubbish that causes mass pile ups if they don't play ball.

How often do these manoeuvres go wrong though? If they were using PITs on our motorways they would often then cause damage to cars and road furniture requiring road closure, full or partial, to resolve.

[Byker28i]

W12GT said:

Earthdweller said:

W12GT said:

What surprises me is how close the responding vehicles have parked and are actually in the debris. When I was in the Met, this was an absolute no-no due to the high risk of picking up debris and getting a puncture.

Looks a pretty significant incident and would be interested to know how that manifested; purely from that photograph with no other information the car positioning would indicate to me that a boxing in manoeuvre gone wrong. Hopefully no innocents hurt.

The van is a dog unit, it will have been behind the TPAC vehicles during the pursuit and the crew/dogs are likely to have deployed into the scene

Not a surprise

The van was almost certainly not part of the accident but may have been following the active incident as it isn’t in all the shots shown, which it would be as part of the investigation. Note it has no obvious damage and is also shown stopped in multiple positions including on the slip road thus suggesting it wasn’t involved in the collision. Therefore it still stopped in the debris and has then moved to other stopping positions, which is bad practice!

Also note that 4no of police vehicles involved - looking from the rear of the accident into the direction of traffic) these would be the Volvo on the right, the BMW in the middle (this has heavy front and rear damage) and the one far ahead with serious front end damage and the roof removed also. These all have obvious damage to outer body and air bags deployed.

The fourth car could potentially be the marked Volvo on the left, however there is no obvious body damage and the airbags do not appear to have been deployed. The black car on its side against the central reservation may have been an unmarked car, a vehicle being pursued or another road user - that has huge back end damage, the front marked car with the roof removed has colossal front end damage, therefore these may have been the original impact (note the lack of serious front end damage to the other marked vehicles).

Without all the facts it’s impossible to know.

The marked BMW in the middle has the most confusing damage being it is furthest back and it’s not obvious how the rear damage could have been sustained because the dark BMW in front has caused the front end damage, but the black car on its side (may be an Audi?) is beyond that crash and it has rear end damage not front - and there would be a lot of front end damage to cause that rear damage on the marked BMW.

Edited by W12GT on Wednesday 9th April 11:30

My thought would be that the police van saw the carnage and parked as close as possible to assist colleagues/those hurt... I'm guessing the severity means punctures weren't considered?

[milesgiles]

Anyone want to bet they were filming police interceptors and went a bit overboard?

Seriously just shut the road ahead of them. These pursuits are ridiculous

[oakdale]

I wonder if it's possible that they were trying to box in the black vehicle with the rear end damage and that its collision avoidance system kicked in and slammed on the brakes.

[Dingu]

milesgiles said:

Anyone want to bet they were filming police interceptors and went a bit overboard?

Seriously just shut the road ahead of them. These pursuits are ridiculous

No, that’s a mad conclusion.

[OvalOwl]

Multiple police vehicles involved in a crash that has closed the A1 in Newcastle.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/09/fi...

[Quattr04.]

Why is it always a BMW?!

[Super Sonic]

Tpac training?

[pavarotti1980]

W12GT said:

The van was almost certainly not part of the accident but may have been following the active incident as it isn’t in all the shots shown, which it would be as part of the investigation. Note it has no obvious damage and is also shown stopped in multiple positions including on the slip road thus suggesting it wasn’t involved in the collision. Therefore it still stopped in the debris and has then moved to other stopping positions, which is bad practice!

Also note that 4no of police vehicles involved - looking from the rear of the accident into the direction of traffic) these would be the Volvo on the right, the BMW in the middle (this has heavy front and rear damage) and the one far ahead with serious front end damage and the roof removed also. These all have obvious damage to outer body and air bags deployed.

The fourth car could potentially be the marked Volvo on the left, however there is no obvious body damage and the airbags do not appear to have been deployed. The black car on its side against the central reservation may have been an unmarked car, a vehicle being pursued or another road user - that has huge back end damage, the front marked car with the roof removed has colossal front end damage, therefore these may have been the original impact (note the lack of serious front end damage to the other marked vehicles).

Without all the facts it’s impossible to know.

The marked BMW in the middle has the most confusing damage being it is furthest back and it’s not obvious how the rear damage could have been sustained because the dark BMW in front has caused the front end damage, but the black car on its side (may be an Audi?) is beyond that crash and it has rear end damage not front - and there would be a lot of front end damage to cause that rear damage on the marked BMW.

Edited by W12GT on Wednesday 9th April 11:30

There is no police BMW in any of the photos.

1 x Volvo XC60/90 (upside down)
3 x Volvo V60
1 x Focus ST

milesgiles said:

Anyone want to bet they were filming police interceptors and went a bit overboard?

Seriously just shut the road ahead of them. These pursuits are ridiculous

Christ you post some utter horse st on here mind

Edited by pavarotti1980 on Wednesday 9th April 12:03