A pat on the back for Northants traffic police...
Discussion
I was travelling down to Northamptonshire late on Friday night on my way to Silverstone where I was working Saturday and Sunday.... I had not long filtered onto the M1 from the M6 at roughly 11:15pm when everthing came to a grinding halt not far north of Watford Gap services... no warning signs anywhere so it had to be an accident. Several people got out of their cars to see if they could establish what had happened. I ran down to the front of the queue to see what the cause was and sure enough there was wreckage (There were people standing around saying "it looks bad!" and apparently reluctant to check, so I had a quick look to see if there were casualties in the cars... there weren't).
Some moron had run out of fuel and instead of coasting over to the hard shoulder, they had stopped in the outside lane. Fortunately they had got out of the car and had managed to get across the carrigeway to the hard shoulder. As was inevitable, the Astra they left was hit by another car, a BMW, which was wedged into the central barrier... the Astra now resembling a crushed beer can was on what remaiuned of its roof, in the centre lane! It was probably massively extreme good luck that nothing else was involved (there were several 40' artics right behind the wreckage!) and evenb more so that there were no serious injuries... the BMW driver was obviously shaken and (I believe) a little bruised.
My car was no more than 100 yds behind the carnage so it obviously just happened seconds before I arrived. The first police vehicle arrived 10 minutes later with a paramedic van just behind it. Once they had established there were no serious injuries, Northamptonshire's BiB's hitched the stranded wrecks to the back of a Range Rover (one at a time obviously) and dragged them onto the hard shoulder and out of the way. So they had the carriageway cleared and re-opened less than 25 minutes after incident... which I thought was quite good! There was a little sence of overkill though (but perhaps it's a case of better safe than sorry)... what I mean is, there were about five or six police cars, three paramedic vans and two fire engines on the scene by the time they re-opened the motorway, and there were more still arriving as everyone pulled away. However, I was tucked up in bed in Silverstone village by midnight! So well done Northants Traffic!
Some moron had run out of fuel and instead of coasting over to the hard shoulder, they had stopped in the outside lane. Fortunately they had got out of the car and had managed to get across the carrigeway to the hard shoulder. As was inevitable, the Astra they left was hit by another car, a BMW, which was wedged into the central barrier... the Astra now resembling a crushed beer can was on what remaiuned of its roof, in the centre lane! It was probably massively extreme good luck that nothing else was involved (there were several 40' artics right behind the wreckage!) and evenb more so that there were no serious injuries... the BMW driver was obviously shaken and (I believe) a little bruised.
My car was no more than 100 yds behind the carnage so it obviously just happened seconds before I arrived. The first police vehicle arrived 10 minutes later with a paramedic van just behind it. Once they had established there were no serious injuries, Northamptonshire's BiB's hitched the stranded wrecks to the back of a Range Rover (one at a time obviously) and dragged them onto the hard shoulder and out of the way. So they had the carriageway cleared and re-opened less than 25 minutes after incident... which I thought was quite good! There was a little sence of overkill though (but perhaps it's a case of better safe than sorry)... what I mean is, there were about five or six police cars, three paramedic vans and two fire engines on the scene by the time they re-opened the motorway, and there were more still arriving as everyone pulled away. However, I was tucked up in bed in Silverstone village by midnight! So well done Northants Traffic!
I can't believe it... 
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