M5 Fatalities

wohoo said:
Surely if the drivers dead, then its pretty futile trying to acertain why it happened, accidents happen,maybe the guy had a heart-attack,was driving too fast, will examining every goddamn grain on the road tell you any more than performing an autopsy on the body or examining the car(s).The key is in the vehicles and the bodies and witness's, many cars will have gone past by the time traffic will have stopped.
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So..wait a minute, let me get this straight.... you are saying that the police shouldn't try to ascertain why an accident happened....just because the driver is dead and because "maybe the driver had a heart attack"....


....are you actually SAYING these words?!
 
He's making a hash of explaining an otherwise good point - we take far too long to do all this and get the roads open. It's nothing like this in the rest of Europe.
 
Gaygle said:
So..wait a minute, let me get this straight.... you are saying that the police shouldn't try to ascertain why an accident happened....just because the driver is dead and because "maybe the driver had a heart attack"....


....are you actually SAYING these words?!
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Jeez its uphill, if we have a dead driver and smashed car , surely those 2 items,(via an autopsy and car investigation back in the csi lab) are going to tell us more about the incident than combing three miles of motorways for 12 hours.
 
What about skid mark, gouge marks etc? 12 hours are a bit excessive but presumably the local plod don't have the latest laser mapping kit and needed to wait until morning.

Also, unlike a side swipe, a breach of a barrier requires immediate replacement of the whole length of both barriers (up to a mile of barrier) that's going to take 3-4 hours.

And for the the person who asked why the close a couple of lanes to retrieve a HGV on the hard shoulder it is because the number drivers who think it is perfectly safe to do 90mph+ less than 2m from somebody hooking up a rescue vehicle.
 
wohoo said:
Jeez its uphill, if we have a dead driver and smashed car , surely those 2 items,(via an autopsy and car investigation back in the csi lab) are going to tell us more about the incident than combing three miles of motorways for 12 hours.
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I think you are forgetting the small fact that when a car smashes through a motorway barrier and ploughs into on coming traffic, the cars are smashed into a million pieces.

Hence, studying the car is studying the million pieces on the road.

I'm sorry, but your argument skills are very weak indeed.
 
PMKeates said:
This isn't the Oxford Union Society. There's no marks for being a good debater. His argument skills are irrelevant to whether he has a point or not :p
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His lack of skills means he is just sounding stupid, rather than arguing his (maybe valid) point and putting it across.
 
wohoo said:
Surely if the drivers dead, then its pretty futile trying to acertain why it happened, accidents happen,maybe the guy had a heart-attack,was driving too fast, will examining every goddamn grain on the road tell you any more than performing an autopsy on the body or examining the car(s).The key is in the vehicles and the bodies and witness's, many cars will have gone past by the time traffic will have stopped.
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So if the negligence of another driver potentially caused someone's death, the police should just say "Oh well, accidents happen. Oh look it's doughnut time."? You'd be entirely happy for an potential evidence to be lost if a member of your family was killed, so long as the rest of the traffic wasn't too inconvenienced?

Not only are you making a hash of putting your point across, your point is completely flawed.
 
Dogbreath said:
So if the negligence of another driver potentially caused someone's death, the police should just say "Oh well, accidents happen. Oh look it's doughnut time."? You'd be entirely happy for an potential evidence to be lost if a member of your family was killed, so long as the rest of the traffic wasn't too inconvenienced?

Not only are you making a hash of putting your point across, your point is completely flawed.
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I just cannot envisage (hopefully thats big enough word for you enlightened academics) why it would take 12 hours, 12 ****ing hours, to comb the motorway for grains of sand, to tell you something that can be acertained from the car(s) theirselves, skid marks,the broken barrier and bodies.I havent once said they shouldnt investigate, they just dont need to close off 8 miles of motorway for 12 hours as they often do.Obviously im just too damn stupid to comment on stuff i see pretty much every week.....Gaygyle, just because i dont agree with you, im stupid? thanks:rolleyes:
 
Gaygle said:
I think you are forgetting the small fact that when a car smashes through a motorway barrier and ploughs into on coming traffic, the cars are smashed into a million pieces.

Hence, studying the car is studying the million pieces on the road.

I'm sorry, but your argument skills are very weak indeed.
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What is a broken shard of glass from the headlight or a plastic piece of the bumper going to tell you that you cant tell from the wrecked car itself? the mechanical bits arent going to shatter into a million pieces now are they....
 
wohoo said:
I just cannot envisage (hopefully thats big enough word for you enlightened academics) why it would take 12 hours, 12 ****ing hours, to comb the motorway for grains of sand, to tell you something that can be acertained from the car(s) theirselves, skid marks,the broken barrier and bodies.I havent once said they shouldnt investigate, they just dont need to close off 8 miles of motorway for 12 hours as they often do.Obviously im just too damn stupid to comment on stuff i see pretty much every week.....Gaygyle, just because i dont agree with you, im stupid? thanks:rolleyes:
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I never said you were stupid and i'm sorry if you thought i was being harsh :). But when you say that the police shouldn't bother investigating RTC's because a driver might have had a heart attack, it does sound just a little bit stupid right?

wohoo said:
What is a broken shard of glass from the headlight or a plastic piece of the bumper going to tell you that you cant tell from the wrecked car itself? the mechanical bits arent going to shatter into a million pieces now are they....
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You don't get it. When car's travelling at 75+ mph collide with semi- stationary vehicles, trust me, everything gets shattered. Ok, the engine block wouldn't shatter, but everything else apart from that would. That means the car IS every tiny piece of plastic or glass on the road.

I'm of the opinion that these things take as long as they take. Every RTC is different so saying that it "shouldn't take as long as it does" is a silly argument, because you can't compare one RTC to another. All of your arguments are coming from a "driver caught in the queue on the motorway" point of view, but have you heard any arguments from people that are actually on scene? I mean they're not going to close a whole motorway if they don't have to, as it costs the economy around £1 million an hour to close a single motorway (iirc). The decisions to close motorways come from high up, not from a lowly traffic cop on the ground - he simply relays the situation to superiors who decide what to do.
 
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Despite the arguments for and against traffic cops, I am simply of the opinion that nobody wants the motorway to close. Everyone (drivers, traffic cops, high ups) wants that motorway flowing.

From that I can draw the conclusion that any time that they spend with it closed is going to be most definitely needed.
 
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