20 hours of road closure after police stop Campervan

There’s always one. Goes just a little but too far and spoils it for th rest of us?

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There's always a bright side. I wondered why there seemed little traffic going past today. :D
 
20 hours .... sounds serious. I wonder why they didn’t just impound the van?
 
20 hours. Pathetic.
The policing of our roads now seems to be a competition about how many people they can inconvenience.

The Germans do it right, clear the road, get the traffic flowing again.
 
Why on earth do they need to close an A road for so long just to check over a van?

It’s a van for Gods sake, it moves, it can be driven or towed round the corner, off the road and then they can mess about to their hearts content.
As GPW says, the police just don’t care about inconveniencing the rest of us.

Richard
 
Clarky said:
Why on earth do they need to close an A road for so long just to check over a van?

It’s a van for Gods sake, it moves, it can be driven or towed round the corner, off the road and then they can mess about to their hearts content.
As GPW says, the police just don’t care about inconveniencing the rest of us.

Richard
Click to expand...
Maybe because defence lawyers would have a field day with potential for contamination in the event of moving.

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Podney said:
Maybe because defence lawyers would have a field day with potential for contamination in the event of moving.
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It is a crime scene....... if they want all the evidence secured and logged without prejudice to the perpetrators day in court then I suppose they had no real choice
 
GPW said:
20 hours. Pathetic.
The policing of our roads now seems to be a competition about how many people they can inconvenience.

The Germans do it right, clear the road, get the traffic flowing again.
Click to expand...

Presumably you know all the facts about this and the reasons for the stop and delays and have based your comment on that insight.
 
I'd always said that the Bailey colour scheme offended against bad taste! Bad taste? It is positively an offence. :D

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iandsm said:
Presumably you know all the facts about this and the reasons for the stop and delays and have based your comment on that insight.
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Yes.

They are searching a campervan.
1. Drag or drive it off the road
2. Then inspect it.

The decision to close the road is always taken for any slight reason, yet in the Highway Code it states it is an offence for us to block the highway.

Broken Link Removed

It's a well known, serious, out of control and well documented problem for the UK.

Oh look a squirrel: Close the road.
www.govyou.co.uk

Stop police closing roads to investigate accidents.

When there is a serious accident, the police have, over the last few years, started closing the road, often causing delays of several hours for the motorists caught in the tail-back. This did no...
www.govyou.co.uk

What do you think they are doing - scraping up the tarmac that the campervan went over?
 
DuxDeluxe said:
It is a crime scene....... if they want all the evidence secured and logged without prejudice to the perpetrators day in court then I suppose they had no real choice
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The road is not a crime scene, they are NOT investigating the road, they are investigating the van.

No other country in europe does this.
 
GPW said:
The road is not a crime scene, they are NOT investigating the road, they are investigating the van.

No other country in europe does this.
Click to expand...
Apparently they do.......... I had a rear end accident on the autobahn to Stuttgart a couple of years ago. The car that hit me was a bit trashed but mine was driveable (amazingly). The German traffic cops shut the whole road for 90 minutes whilst they investigated the accident. Nobody was hurt but they threw the book at the poor guy that hit me.

8A38BDC3-3790-475D-AF54-6C877A26C4A9.jpeg
 
Last edited:
90 minutes or 20 hours :)

The problem has appeared on Top Gear and a few motoring forums. If the UK police were professional about it they would work to keep the road open.

Policing in the UK is very inconsistent. Motorbike theft is one area, there's a guy on PH who had two bikes totalling around £17k stolen from a locked garage, ground anchors etc. all cut through. They couldn't even be bothered to turn up and look.

Closing roads for hours has become the norm, not the exception in the UK. 20 hours is long enough to miss hospital appointments, job interviews, flights etc, these are life changing delays.

There's no evidence the campervan was even involved in a crash.
20 HOURS to investigate one van. Unbelievable.
 
Depends what they were looking for. What intelligence they had. What if it was terrorism related? Do you think that would be justified? I’ve no idea what’s going on but it’s a decision they wouldn’t take lightly. They must be pretty worried about something.

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Grianan said:
Depends what they were looking for. What intelligence they had. What if it was terrorism related? Do you think that would be justified? I’ve no idea what’s going on but it’s a decision they wouldn’t take lightly. They must be pretty worried about something.
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It's a fiat based coachbuilt. I've seen them at shows.
Put it onto a low loader and drive it off the road.

20 HOURS to clear the road, seriously? Think about that for a while.
The Chinese could have built a couple of miles of 6 lane highway in that time.

20 HOURS. Go outside and look at your street for 20 hours, after a few minutes you'll appreciate the issue here.

There is no excuse, WWII ordinance has been cleared in less time.
 
The uk problem is that the focus for police now has to be the collection of evidence for apportionment of blame and crossing the boundaries required to allow charges to be laid. Gone are the days of trying to work out why incidents happen, it’s all about evidence to support convictions. This change in emphasis was the work of Richard Brunstrom, plenty of info about him on a wiki page!

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it's all Tony Blairs fault once we had american style ambulance chasers even a small tap in traffic now results in the roof being cut off and a huge claim
 
GPW said:
Yes.

They are searching a campervan.
1. Drag or drive it off the road
2. Then inspect it.

The decision to close the road is always taken for any slight reason, yet in the Highway Code it states it is an offence for us to block the highway.

Broken Link Removed

It's a well known, serious, out of control and well documented problem for the UK.

Oh look a squirrel: Close the road.
www.govyou.co.uk

Stop police closing roads to investigate accidents.

When there is a serious accident, the police have, over the last few years, started closing the road, often causing delays of several hours for the motorists caught in the tail-back. This did no...
www.govyou.co.uk

What do you think they are doing - scraping up the tarmac that the campervan went over?
Click to expand...

With your knowledge of crimes scene investigation and accident investigation techniques perhaps could write to the police forces concerned and offer advice on Improving current practices.
 
First of all, I haven't a clue as to why they need to examine the vehicle in situ rather than removing it but they must have their reasons, as it's always better to be able to examine a vehicle under cover, in controlled conditions. My first thoughts are that it might contain explosives or some other hazardous substance but that doesn't seem to be borne out by the lack of protective clothing or relevant services. It's stumped me...

Anyway, the reason for the interminable road closures nowadays goes back to the late 90s, when it was decided that the public wanted, and expected, road collision investigations to be investigated with the same degree of thoroughness as any other potential homicide investigation, ie murder, until proven otherwise. Up to that time, we relied on experience and pragmatism as to the level of investigation needed, but evidently the public didn't seem to trust our judgement. You all now pay the price for that lack of faith, on a regular basis... :)

One night back around 1997, a youth dropped a chunk of concrete kerbstone off the bridge at northbound Junc 5, M3 Hook. It went through the windscreen of a passing car and almost killed the driver. As a Crime Scene Manager, I was called out to investigate the scene. I had no choice but to close the carriageway under the bridge whilst we searched the scene, so we put the traffic up the exit slip, across the roundabout and back onto the northbound via the on-slip. We also had no choice but to wait until dawn to start the examination, which put us into rush hour.
Despite the short detour, no more than 500m or so, we managed to create a 17 mile tailback down to Winchester. All the time, I was getting the hurry-up from the Traffic Chief Inspector, who repeatedly told me I was costing the country £1.5m/hour in lost productivity. All I could do was apologise but we would not be bullied into doing a rush job, regardless of the cost. Not one police officer, either working at scene or managing the traffic, wanted the delay to last one minute more than necessary, I can assure you. - and it will be exactly the same today.

The victim (after a long period of recovery) and his family were impressed and grateful for the massive amount of work that went into that investigation, despite the fact that we never did get a conviction, and I'm sure that if something similar happened to one of your family or friends, you'd expect the same level of service. Frustrating and costly it may be, all that pales into insignificance when you're the victim.
 
GPW said:
20 hours. Pathetic.
The policing of our roads now seems to be a competition about how many people they can inconvenience.
Click to expand...
It's nice that you have 100% of the facts of the incident. It would be splendid if you could share them with us mere mortals

Thankyou in advance :)

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