Why We Need to Close The Roads

Why do the police close the motorways and major roads when there's a serious or fatal collision? That's probably a question you've asked yourself in the past. It's certainly a question I get asked, by my colleagues, friends, and members of the public who write in to us. I just want you to picture the scene. There's been a tragic incident, a fatal or serious collision on one of the motorways. The Road Policing Unit will be required to attend. Imagine you're a member of the public stuck in the front of that queue. You've seen this tragic incident and the Police then arrive. There could be a number of vehicles involved in the collision itself. There could be a lot of debris all over the road. The officers' duty when they first turn up there is safety of the public and minimising any more risk to those people who might have been involved in that collision. Once the officers have made sure that the scene is secure - we do treat it like a crime scene - then the investigation can begin. Just think - we've got once chance, it's a busy road, its a busy motorway, lots of people want to go places, it's our one chance to get that investigation right. All the debris has to be marked, the marks on the road have to be collated by the Collision Investigation Unit so they can find out what exactly has happened. It would be easy to say, "Let's open a road", "Why don't you open the lanes?", "Open another lane, let's get the traffic flowing". That one piece of vital evidence might be in that lane we've re-opened just to make traffic flow a bit better. If it was your family, if it was your loved ones, would you want us to just skip through this investigation quickly to get traffic moving, just to get things going? Or would you rather us do a thorough quality investigation? I certainly know what I would prefer. Working with our partner agencies we work extremely hard to minimise the disruption. We've all been stuck in traffic jams, and motorways are great when they're running well. The impact on local businesses, and people going about their day to day business, can have a huge impact. However this will never be to the detriment of a quality and thorough investigation. Our Family Liaison Officers are highly trained people, to deal with the victims and the victims'families. We owe it to the families to find out what happened, which is why sometimes it takes a long time to investigate the scene. They've got unanswered questions a lot of the time. It's up to us and it's our duty, as I've mentioned earlier, not just a legal responsibility, but a moral duty to them to let them know what happened at that time. I hope that's just given you a little insight into why we close roads, sometimes longer than you think is necessary. It's an important part of our work. We owe it to the victims, and the victims' families, to make sure we conduct a thorough investigation, to make sure that we can answer all those questions. If you're ever stuck in one of these traffic jams in the future, and usually it will be from a tragic incident, I just hope you understand why, but also I want to thank you for your patience and co-operation in these very difficult circumstances.