I wondered how long it would be until the somebody complained about the road being closed!
(And how long the road stays closed is nothing to do with the HA....never let the facts get in the way of a good rant eh!!)
Edited by midlifecrisis on 30/04/2008 at 15:16
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I freely admit to speaking from a position of ignorance of the processes involved. What strikes me though, as a layman, is that it does seem to take much longer to deal with the aftermath of collisions than it used to. Of course one would want the injured to be given the highest possible priority in such cases and I suppose the law and society in general needs to establish whether anyone is culpable. But why does it take so long? Without droning on insensitively, the knock on effect of the closure of major roads is hugely expensive and inconvenient at best. To throw myself open to, possibly fair, criticism, what would br wrong with a system whereby wreakage was rapidly removed for subsequent inspection along the lines employed at an F1 race for example?
I say this with the greatest of respect and sympathy to any bereaved or injured of course.
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What strikes me though, as a layman, is that it does seem to take much longer to deal with the aftermath of collisions than it used to.
Note that no other country in the whole world does this. Not just nowhere in the 3rd world, it does not happen in the USA, Japan, Germany, China, France, ... carry the list on down all the economies of the world. It does not happen anywhere in the Eurozone bureaucratic EU, it happens only in old Blighty.
Yesterday, all routes to the major Hospitals in Surrey were completely gridlocked as a result of the "health & safety reasons, and forensic accident investigation" closure of the A3. How many people died as a result? Will there be an investigation in to who was responsible?
Not to mention GCSE exams that were missed by some children, or flights missed, or such other trivial problems of getting on with life.
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According to Gwent police there is no such thing as an accident. Accidents imply no-one was to blame, but the police believe that someone is always responsible. So all 'incidents' on the roads are treated as crime scenes, and investigated fully which results in the ludicrously long road closures.
Source: BBC report about how the M4 was shut for 11 hours after an accident... sorry incident.
tinyurl.com/3v8t9w
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mlc probably knows better than any of us but I thought that the delay is because the site of the accident becomes a crime scene with, presumably, evidence being gathered etc. What's the legal authority to close a road?
What i don't understand is why the delay seems to have gone on all day. If the accident was between Ripley and Guildford, couldn't southbound traffic been diverted onto the M25 and then south (ish) down the M3 and M23 or A24, or locally via Leatherhead or Woking?
Edited by Optimist on 30/04/2008 at 16:02
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Judging by the fact I didn't get out of 1st or 2nd gear between J2 and J3, I'd say the M3 was bearing the brunt last night going home.
I got angry for a while, but it soon pales into insignificance when you hear that someone hasn't made it home at all.
Cheers
DP
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I of course meant "wreckage", my apologies, brain fade.
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They probably spend the first 3 hrs doing a risk assessment of the scene, then have to draft a method statement.
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Thanks for the responses, all equally sympathetic to those directly involved.
There was a programme on not long ago about what carnage could be caused because major accidents like these are considered scenes of crime.
THe scenario from memory was there occured some major accident on the M23, just south of the M25, which caused delays in both directions- this then created havoc on all the local roads,leading to catastophic congestions, and loads of minor accidents generally affecting M2, M23, M25,m3, M4 -this in turn meant people couldn't get to Heathrow or Gatwick -which led to air traffic had to be diverted, as air traffic crew and staff couldn't cover those who couldn't get in , leading to those i flight having to being diverted all over the country, and worst case scenario planes running out of fuel -Unlikely, maybe, but possible.
As others have mentioned an accident at 9.50 SHOULDN'T still have the road shut late evening, in both directions, as far as I know.
The ambulances and fire brigade rescue the injured and victims, Video the evidence, measure any skid marks, move the vehicles to the hard shoulder and open as many lanes as possible - should be possible within 3 hours
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Yesteray, I chose to go on a non urgent local shoping trip and chose the A3 from Oxshott one junction to Cobham. Exactly half a mile from my exit I joined the queue and had 30 - 45 minutes listening to the Radio prior to getting out of the traffic.
It appears that the big truck involved jack knifed and blocked all three carriageways southbound.
Reports said the delay was due to chemical "clean up " which I suspect was specialists driving a fork lift to move the load to another truck.
Yes the diverts were on to the M25 and most probably most onto the M3 which then suffered.
There was also another road totally closed at Worpleston near Guildford due to fatality.
This is the route from M3 J3 to Guildford so adding to the problems.
I had a look at Traffic England and the A3 appeared to open about 2200.
It was this first time I have seen a carriageway / road on the display "grayed out" but no key to explain = closed.
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>>Reports said the delay was due to chemical "clean up " which I suspect wasspecialists driving a fork lift to move the load to another truck.
Yes, a chemical lorry was involved but the Surrey Advertiser site says that there was no spillage.
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There was a programme on not long ago about what carnage could be caused because major accidents like these are considered scenes of crime.
Was this the one that ultimately resulted in a mid-air plane collision over London? Something to do with an exhausted air traffic controller having to work a double shift as her colleague couldn't get there to relieve her, and making a mistake?
It was terrifying.
Cheers
DP
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According to Gwent police there is no such thing as an accident. Accidents imply no-one was to blame, but the police believe that someone is always responsible. So all 'incidents' on the roads are treated as crime scenes, and investigated fully which results in the ludicrously long road closures. >>
It goes further than that. There was an accident in the centre of town recently and the police closed the road. I, like many others, stopped to have an idle look at what was going on.
We were all asked to "move along" by a young policeman. I said ok and went, but I'm beginning whether I actually should have done that and what right the policeman had to ask people to go away.
Any thoughts?
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Gwent police are deluded.
An accident is the result of an unplanned and and unintended series of events which, when set in place, cannot be interrupted. This is the definition used by air crash investigators who frankly deal with far more horrific and complex accidents than anything Gwent police have ever seen.
Each individual event, and the sequence are vital. Remove any, and the outcome is different. An accident requires more than one event to occur, and intention is not one of them.
Cheers
DP
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It is annoying when you are sitting in a jam and don't know what happens, but surely when you realise what has happened and a life is lost, you should understand why the road is closed? Just imagine if it is (God forbid) one of your friends/family that this happens to. Surely you would want it investigated to the fullest extent so that the right action can be taken against any parties in the wrong.
I was caught up this weekend on the A406 where the police had closed the road. I was on the opposite carriage way and they were taking lots of photos/markings of a motor bike on its side. I presumed that the rider had been killed and rather than any other thought, the one that I had was of pity for the family about the futility of this death.
As for the A3, I presume that the driver of the saloon was rear ended and shunted into the lorry in front. I am not sure if this was in stationary traffic or not, but was wondering whether it could all have been avoided if more room was left between the saloon and the lorry in front, so that when being shunted up the behind, there might have been a bit of room to use. Is there a refommended distance to leave (2 car lengths isn't really going to be much use in this case)? And does it explain why people don't like driving in lane 1.
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Surely you would want it investigated to the fullest extent so that the right action can be taken against any parties in the wrong.
No, and specially not at the cost of uncosted and unjustified expense to the rest of the public. You only have to watch programs like Traffic Cops to see that at the end of all these expensive investigations, rarely is anything meaningful achieved.
Get some sense of perspective. No other country in the world does what the bureacratic system in the UK does. The people who take these decisions to close the roads should be asked to explain their actions and be accountable for them. HJ's faq on this
" MOTORWAY CLOSURES. What can be done about them? Read more...
www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/faq.htm?id=99 "
has some ideas on how things could be improved, but in my view they do not go far enough.
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I used to commute in and out of London.
Occasionally there would be a fatality, intentional or otherwise.
I don't recall the line being closed for more than a few hours ever.
What's the difference?
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What's the difference?
I think the difference is one decision made by a business. The other is made by unelected public servants without any authority to use common sense and who are trained to follow rules to the letter, and end up following "guidelines" as set out by ACPO. They misunderstand "guidelines" to mean "rules set in tablets of stone".
This difference is evidenced by the action the Railway operators took in relation to the frequent closure of railway lines due to the diktat by Fire Brigades that safety zones be established for 24 hours where gas cylinders are present in fires. The railway companies have come up with a robot which now goes in to film the cylinders and can be sent in to douse down any dangerous cylinders. This has resulted in a massive reduction in the unnecessary shut down of railway lines. see
www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/05/robot_firefighter.../
www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepa...l
Note that there has never been a risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis done for any of these arbitrary closures. If you gave these people who decide on Motorway and Railway closures the powers to rule over our Nuclear, Oil and Gas installations, they would shut them down immediately by classifying them to too dangerous to be located in the UK.
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What thoroughly selfish lot some of you are. I don't normally get angry reading an internet forum, but some of you take the biscuit. If you should ever get the dreaded knock on the door, I'll be interested to see what your views are. I dealt with many, many fatal RTCs and I will never apologise for doing a good job.
"It goes further than that. There was an accident in the centre of town recently and the police closed the road. I, like many others, stopped to have an idle look at what was going on.
We were all asked to "move along" by a young policeman. I said ok and went, but I'm beginning whether I actually should have done that and what right the policeman had to ask people to go away.
Any thoughts?"
Any thoughts........yes, get a life!!
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Any thoughts........yes, get a life!!>>
That's not a thought though, is it?
That's just a stupid, knee-jerk response.
Why are people asked to move on? What's the statute? What law are people breaking? In the accident I spoke of no-one was hurt. So where's the harm and what's the problem?
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Bristish Rail used to hose the blood and bits off the track so as not to delay the next train.
After Hatfield, the whole system had a mximum speed in many places of 20mph for 3 or 4 months.
Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes is the right way in the modern world to deal with accidents.
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I thought this type of thread had been thrashed to death. I started one a year or so back and got condemned as a callous unfeeling moron by the B i B on this thread.
Theres two sides to this and both are firmly entrenched. There is no clear definitive answer.
Since my last thread , I lost a lady employee not long after that in a road accident and a very thorough investigation was carried out by the police.This proved only that if the council had cleared the drains when they should have the accident might not have happened . The council were not prosecuted and shes never coming back. The road was closed for around three hours.
The police of course are easy to knock for these closures but they also did a superb job to assist me in helping her husband claim the benefits to which he was entitled by providing correspondence which they did not have to do and giving him comfort and support in his loss. I do not envy them that job so - Full marks to them.
Since then I have also been caught on at least three occasions in closures on M23 / M25 and A264 for accidents where the knock on effects of a 3 / 4 hour closure have been horrendous delays and costs. An hour sitting in traffic going nowhere. Infuriating for all caught in it. So thats the other side.
So where do you draw the line ?
I have used the incident of the 'Spiderman' Fathers for Justice protest near Tower Bridge where a protester sat on a tower crane dressed in a Spiderman outfit to make a protest and the Tower Bridge Road was closed for a week - yes a whole week disruption to the traffic in the square mile , the financial centre of the world because some clot decided that the protester might jump. Thats too far in my opinion.
I have posted before that we really need to know who takes these closure decisions and to whom they are accountable and lay down guidelines and targets to reopen the roads.
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Why are people asked to move on? What's the statute? What law are people breaking? In the accident I spoke of no-one was hurt. So where's the harm and what's the problem?
(I'm presuming you were a pedestrian, otherwise the answer ought to be obvious)
so as not to cause an obstruction.... one or two wouldn't hurt..but.. when one or two stop, so do loads more and the next thing you know there's a street full, because people are sheep. It can also be quite dangerous depending on the road layout, weather, time of day etc.
Highway Obstruction (or possibly even Obstructing a Police Office in the Execution of their Duty depending how bad it was)
It is not a very nice human trait for someone to stand there slack jawed gaping at someone else's misfortune is it?... and.... irritating having to deal with secondary accidents, because someone is just being nosey.... because if pedestrians are gawping, you can bet the contents of your wallet the passing car drivers are as well and it's not good having people stood around in a place of potential danger
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Westpig
All fair points. But the road was closed, so no traffic was passing. More people stop in the street on a Saturday to listen to itinerant musicians. I'm not clear what bit of the constable's duty looking on obstructs. I doubt the constable would either.
I think there's a real desire on the part of the police force or service or whatever they're branded as this morning, to have things entirely their own way: viz, we can all watch them on telly as they chase about pointlessly in cars and helicopters after some TWOCCERS, but if you stop in the street to watch them at work you've got to move on. How do a few pedestrians obstruct the police when camera crews don't?
Of course it's horrible when people die in traffic accidents. But closing a road for any number of hours doesn't bring them back. Having to pass the news to relatives has got nothing to do with road closures, either. That's a part of the job. Doctors tell patients everyday that they have terminal conditions, but don't close a factory if it's industrially related. It's not a mark of respect to close roads and suggesting that roads stay closed too long is not a mark of disrespect, either.
We all know we're in the grip of a semi-hysterical 'elf an' safety lobby and terrified that some shyster will sue if Form 84/02/06 (or somesuch) isn't filled in properly. So coppers hang about all day on the A3 with community support and who knows who else, while crime goes on unhindered elsewhere.
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Optimist,
You answered two points i.e. your own pedestrian interest in an accident scene and the A3 chaos
1, already answered above. Your point is taken, but is just isn't helpful having a crowd gather, so you ask them to clear off, most do. Those that don't get told to rather than asked to.
2, I tend to agree, but it's a difficult one. There has to be a balance between scooping a victim up, washing down the road and 'getting on with life' and properly investigating the cause of a death, which more often than not HAS been caused by someone else's negligence. If someone has failed to maintain their vehicle, has been driving too fast, been required to work too many hours by their boss etc, then officialdom needs to know to try to prevent it.
It's been said before but some years back the police in this country, through ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) decided that RTA investigations into death were seriously lacking when compared to other kinds of death where someone else was thought to have caused it... i.e. the difference between a full murder squad investigating a man stabbed on a pavement... and...a traffic supervisor and PC investigating a man driven over, when on a pavement.
I'm not sure the balance is right...we've all been held up for ages and get fed up... but not an easy subject to get right. I suspect there DOES need to be input into the subject from central politicians/ senior police officers and guidelines issued about the balance being skewed more to the economics and serious delays caused to the country.
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I'm fully with MLC on this one - some of you should be ashamed.
I was involved in a very serious collision a few years ago and sadly someone passed away in the air ambulance on the way to hosplital. The police, right from the start, closed the road even before the poor lady had passed away and treated the area as a crime scene.
As the driver of the other vehicle involved, I was very pleased that they did this as, on the face of it, I was to blame. However, because the police closed the road and spent three hours collecting evidence it became clear that I was not to blame.
My point is that if the police had not closed the road and investigated with such thoroughness and professionalism then in all probability I would be in prison serving time for causing death by dangerous driving.
And I'm sure that three young children will be comforted to know that their mother died not because of some idiot driver but because of a genuine accident - and I use that word with confidence as that is exactly what the police called it at the inquest.
Cheers.
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Thanks Badwolf. You demonstrate the point that all these moaning minnies will change their tune if they're involved.
Optimist- if someone is shot you expect the Police 'to do their job' and investigate it.
If the blokes gun jams and he runs somebody over and kills them instead, you want us to sweep it to the side of the road so you're not inconvenienced.
The point is, we don't know what the circumstances are until we investigate them. I have been to fatals that have involved somebody being deliberately run over. If it was a member of your family, how would you feel if we said 'sorry, we'll never know what happened, we wanted to get the road open.'
Life isn't all black and white. Nor is it simple.
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Optimist- if someone is shot you expect the Police 'to do their job' and investigate it.
If the blokes gun jams and he runs somebody over and kills them instead, you want us to sweep it to the side of the road so you're not inconvenienced.>>
It's not to do with inconvenience. I do know life isn't simple. I don't think getting the road open is the priority.
I do think we're in danger of losing a sense of proportion.
Maybe the next time a telly company approaches a police force, the police could take the opportunity to show why you close a major road for 12 hours after an accident/incident, instead of showing a lot of young blokes who like driving fast chasing another lot of young blokes who like driving fast.
Then all the moaning minnies would be able to understand.
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Maybe the next time a telly company approaches a police force the police could take the opportunity to show why you close a major road for 12 hours after an accident/incident instead of showing a lot of young blokes who like driving fast chasing another lot of young blokes who like driving fast.
I think you'll find that the t.v. companies choose what they broadcast, not the people being filmed....and the t.v. company will show what most viewers want to see, which is a bit of excitement. Can't imagine the majority of viewers would want to see some police chief explaining about road closures.
Same reason why reality type programmes have come to the fore rather than good documentaries or educational programmes
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The BBC are with my unit at the moment, filming another episode of 'Traffic Cops'. They are here for a month, to produce a one hour programme. They have also had problems getting people to agree to take the film crew out, because of their previous 'dodgy' editing.
The time after a fatal RTC is not exciting. It's a period when professionals are doing what they're good at, meticulous investigation.
I also like to thankyou for describing me as a 'young bloke'. That's made me day.
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