Huge accident on M5
- Thread starter knip
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![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Fog on its own doesn't cause an accident. There had to be something for somebody to drive into in said fog. Ordinarily everyone doesn't crash when its foggy.
Presumably only people immediatly around the initial impact would know if it was a car joining the motorway, so thats limited to the car itself, the lorry driver and perhaps a few other cars. Everyone else would just have seen a rapidly developing accident not the initial cause?
[TW]Fox;20490642 said:
****ing hundreds mate, literally. Thats my point, I live on the roads, day in day out. I see this often and sit in the delays for hours on end.
You don't hear of the vast majority of incidents as nobody gets hurt so the media are not interested, but the cost in terms of delays is still there.
Just because were ranked high does not mean there is room for improvement and a lot of it.
When you see what I see on an all to regular basis, you, I'd hope,would feel considerably different.
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[TW]Fox;20490693 said:
Its easy to say that but if you instantly lose all vision with no warning it can be pretty scary, what do you do, slow down in case the vehicle in front has? you might get hit form behind. Maintain your speed in case the vehicle behind has? the one in front might be breaking. Not to mention that instant fog can a good chance of icing up the windscreen (according to 5th gear anyway).
Here's the full quote:
I've read it could be linked to smoke from Taunton Rugby club's bonfire that caused visibility issues. A witness has suggested that in a few seconds visibility went from clear to a few metres... If that's what set the events in motion then I'm not sure any driver will get the blame. Sounds a bit too much like something out of Final Destination though.
It was pretty foggy, granted it was very patchy fog, but overall conditions were poor, bad enough overall everyone should have been driving slower and with more care and attention than normal.
Around where I live and where my grandparents live on Ilminster road just down from the rugby club visibility was down to about 3 car lengths for most of the evening, anything beyond that was quite indistinct.
As far as the motorway safety record goes, we rarely attend RTC's on the motorway network despite having a massive amount of M-way running through our service area. Statistically, motorways are indeed very, very safe to travel on and a lot less risky than the rural A and B roads which the majority of RTC's in the UK occur on ( with a corresponding higher percentage of fatalities and serious injuries ).
On the flip side however, RTC's on the motorway are either at one end of the spectrum or the other - there's no "in between" as far as severity goes, at least in my experience of 22 years in the service. They are either a bit of a fuss over nothing, say a minor bump that has been called in by members of the public passing by perhaps not appreciating the extent or severity of the incident or the other end of said spectrum such as this one on the M5 has sadly been. All RTC's on motorways have a multi agency approach and some depending on their physical location will have an SOG ( Special Operating Group ) and specific SOP's applied to them. PDA - Pre determined attendance for a motorway RTC is 3 x Rescue Pumps, 1 HRU - Heavy Rescue Unit and a flexi officer. 2 pumps will approach from one side of the carriageway and the third will take a "dual approach" route to access the incident from the other side of the carriageway.
On the flip side however, RTC's on the motorway are either at one end of the spectrum or the other - there's no "in between" as far as severity goes, at least in my experience of 22 years in the service. They are either a bit of a fuss over nothing, say a minor bump that has been called in by members of the public passing by perhaps not appreciating the extent or severity of the incident or the other end of said spectrum such as this one on the M5 has sadly been. All RTC's on motorways have a multi agency approach and some depending on their physical location will have an SOG ( Special Operating Group ) and specific SOP's applied to them. PDA - Pre determined attendance for a motorway RTC is 3 x Rescue Pumps, 1 HRU - Heavy Rescue Unit and a flexi officer. 2 pumps will approach from one side of the carriageway and the third will take a "dual approach" route to access the incident from the other side of the carriageway.
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Man of Honour
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Certainly very suspect isn't it - lots of witnesses on BBC news were at that event.
Tbh, I suspect it was just a huge number of factors that contributed.
Soldato
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It varies a lot though. I've been to bonfires before that started reasonably early on while it was still light and blacked out the sky with smoke
Permabanned
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Depends on how many tyres they'd decided to throw in the bonfire as to how much black smoke it'll produce. Northern Ireland used to have a huge problem with burning tyres on bonfires, now they've all but been eliminated. Kind of ironic, the Orange having to go "green".
Soldato
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This!
Wood fires don't create massive amounts of smoke unless your burning a forest, besides smoke rises. Fog on the over hand has a great tendency to just roll in in moments at ground level.