I was on the motorway tonight and had to take evasive action which ended up with me slaloming through some cones that where blocking off my usual turn off. There was a police officer in a Land Rover further up which I approached, hoping to explain why I was the wrong side of the cones, but before I could say anything he told me in a very aggressive manner to get back on the main carriageway.
I started to explain the reason for me being there but as I began speaking he again in a very aggressive manner told me to get back on the other side of the cones and then said if I didn't I'd be spending a nite in the cells. This last comment and his aggresive tone left me speachless and because I didn't try to drive back out thru cones into traffic that was passing fairly quickly he seemed to get more exasperated and wandered out into the oncoming traffic waving a cone to slow them down.
I know it probably appeared to him that I was some pleb that was trying to go down the junction even tho it was blocked off and I now know that this was due to an accident, but it was the way that he was so aggressive from the outset that shocked me and I had two passengers in the car that where equally taken aback by his manner.


Mark.

 

complain

 

Agree with madjay there m8,complain.

 

see when i was a wee lad, i used to love the police coming down my way they were always really nice to us kids, they even came to our parents to ask permission for us to have a scoot in the police car once. now u may think that is a waste of police time, but i dont because now with me being a bit older i have huge amount of respect for them and have not been in trouble with the law to date

 

What were you evading that made you veer into your normal turn off despite the cones being there?

Bit tricky to know what was going on in his head.Several possibilities.

1.Like you say,he thought you had ignored the cones.This is quite a common occurance & he would no doubt have seen people cut through cones that were closing a M-way many times before.So he would have little patience for yet another one,whatever the reason.

2.If he was up to his neck in dealing with a RTA the last thing he needs is a long drawn out chat about why you had cut through the cones.His problem is that with you there others seeing you through the cones might make them think "Whats good for him is good for me".Then before you know it he would have umpteen cars to turn back through the cones.His priority is to just get you the hell out of there & get back to his RTA.

3.What was aggresive & rude to you.Was probably short,sharp & to the point to him.Lets face it,if you are cutting people out of cars & clearing up at a RTA then pleasantries would come some way down the order of things.

His training should have helped him deal with it better under the stress of the situation.But then perhaps you could have been more thick skinned & not took it so personally & just gone on your way.

I still wanna know why you ran the cones.

 

As the delightful yellow puppet says, an RTA is often a hellishly stressful situation to deal whichever emergency service you are with and you were just another nuisance.

 

To be fair to the copper there would be a couple of questions that would come to mind: If it had been a concrete barrier rather than cones would your evasive action have taken you into it? Either answer highlights that you probably missed observing something that the driver of every other vehicle on the road saw.

Secondly if I had just spend half an hour setting out cones to close a road and someone drove through them then I'd probably have fairly strong opinions on the matter.

So, while it seems reasonable to me that you went to explain to him you were sorry you messed up I can also understand how you may not have caught him at a very good time. My guess is that you both caught each other at a bad time and I'd forget about it and keep a closer eye out for cones in future.

Look on the funny side: he'd gone to all that trouble setting out cones, getting nice straight lines etc. and next thing he knows there's some bloke driving towards him waving and wanting a chat! I'd say you were lucky he wasn't armed!

 

I ended up going through the cones because there was no prior warning that the junction was closed until you actually got to the point where you would normally turn off and I couldn't see down the road due to the traffic in front of me.
The cars in front where traveling at normal speeds for this bit of motorway (60ish) so I had no indication of a need to change lanes until they quickly moved over as they saw the lane closure, it was only then that I could see ahead but as I was traveling at speed with cars behind and on my right I decided the safest direction to go in was through the cones.
It was just one of those things, other cars had a lane to move into quickly and I didn't


I agree totally.


I agree that in a RTA situation the stress must be immense and I was obviously in the wrong but I do know the difference between someone who's being sharp/to the point or downright aggressive and he was the latter

Having just had a brown pants moment with the cones I stupidly thought I was doing my public duty to warn him that there was insufficient warning about the closure and perhaps save him having to clear up more bent metal, I won't make the same mistake again


I still don't know how I missed the cones.

Mark.

 

It's spooky but they did this sort of scenario recently on that car program on Sky.

They set up three lanes on an airfield & had a car follow another at around 60-70.Then the one in front came across a cardboard box (pretending to be a lump of something hard) sat in the middle of the lane.

The idea was to see how the car behind reacted when the one in front suddenly changed lane to avoid the obstacle.

Needless to say the guest drivers all hit the box.So you going through the cones is not in itself unique.

They were all told that they should have left more space behind the car in front to give them more reaction time.

Also they were told that if they had been in heavier traffic that better forward observation would have told them something was going on in their lane well before they got to the "something".

As hedgehog said just be glad it wasn't one of those concrete snake things they use to shut bits of road off.