While readers are thinking about Dave Parry’s recent suggestion that the time investigating road traffic accidents (RTAs) should be limited can I suggest they watch episode four of series three of the BBC’s The Crash Detectives.
This particular episode features two HGV drivers who had been involved in serious RTAs. One of the HGV drivers, having just turned right at a set of lights, had been flashed down by a car driver. The reason was because an elderly woman had somehow ended up underneath his lorry. Sadly, this was now a fatal accident. The other HGV driver had knocked a cyclist down on a clear road in daylight. The cyclist suffered serious injuries. The crash detectives, or rather the collision investigation team (CIT) from Gwent Police, was assigned to investigate both RTAs because “every serious incident on the road requires forensic examination”.
It is clear from the BBC documentary that CIT approaches every such incident with an open mind and, in order to apportion any blame, it investigates with remarkable and forensic thoroughness. This clearly takes time. We all know what the punishments can be for careless driving where serious injury or death occurs. In the case of the two HGV drivers, they were both completely exonerated with no blame whatsoever being apportioned, and no charges were levied against them. This was because of the time-consuming investigation by CIT. To see exactly what happened, the programme is still available on BBC iPlayer as I write.
In a press release for the BBC programme, Sgt Bob Wetherall of Gwent CIT said: “Every road death should be treated as a murder scene. The difference being that we’ve got the skill to deal with it in a relatively short time frame.
“If you had a murder in a house, that house could be sealed off for weeks, whereas if someone dies on a motorway the pressure is on us to get that motorway open.
“We’ve got responsibility over and above anything else to the families to find out what happened.
“So actually, when the road is closed for eight hours people should be asking: ‘How can you do your job so quickly?’ as opposed to: ‘Why is it closed for so long?’
“We only get one shot at it, so once that road is reopened, we’ve lost the
opportunity.”
I imagine that, had the investigations been time limited as Mr. Parry suggests, and the full facts not established, there could have been the possibility of miscarriages of justice, particularly in the case of the HGV driver who found an elderly woman had died under the HGV he was driving.
I also imagine that both HGV drivers are thankful for keeping their freedom, their licences and their jobs, for the time CIT spent on what were crime scenes getting to the bottom of what actually happened.
Perhaps readers might like to watch the episode of The Crash Detectives mentioned here. I know I concluded that, had I been involved in a RTA for which I felt I was not at fault, I would be saying to CIT: “Take your time. Please, take your time.”
Be careful what you wish for, Mr Parry.
