a mate of mine saw his bonnet on the A19
driving at 70, it suddenly flipped up so he couldn’t see. He was overtaking a lorry so he put his hazzards on, kept himself parrallel with the lorry and slowed down a bit so nothing on his left anynore. Then drifted to the left. Once behind the lorry, he slowed more and drifted to the left again, hoping to end up on the grass verge. But it was smooth as he stopped. He’d ended up in a layby and luckily there was no-one there!

I remember driving down the M1 once. Everyone driving reasonably slowly due to an incident ahead. Drove past an engine(!) in the middle lane then two foreign registered lorries parked up and the rear of a small car…..a bit further on were two black guys stood on the hard shoulder GRINNING at me- a wierd full on grin! That puzzled me. Then the penny dropped. They’d obviously had a very very lucky escape and the grinning was a human reflex.

My first time driving on the motorway was in the Midget.

Got overtaken by a Vulcan bomber.

A fe miles later I was overtaken by the remains of a lory tyre (I presume) bouncing down the motorway, each bounce must have been to lorry height and it was going faster than the trafic, very scary in a very small convertible with th eroof down!

Seen some crazy, tragic, stupid things in 20 odd years patrolling local roads but the one which comes to mind relates to a very lucky young man.

Got sent to a crash on the Kingston Bridge, M8, Glasgow in the early hours. Guy driving alone in a hatchback had fallen asleep going north over the bridge in lane 1. Lane 1 becomes the Bothwell St off ramp, which rises up and veers right over the M8 and into the city centre. Snoozy didn’t make the turn and drifted into the nearside barrier of the elevated section. His momentum uprooted the uprights of the barrier, sending posts and concrete chunks flying onto the main M8 far below, causing numerous blowouts and traffic screeching to a halt.

The horizontal spars of the barrier broke and one section punched through the front grill of his car. As he continued forward, the spar skewered through the engine bay, bulkhead, popped the stereo out the dash, grazed his left arm, passed between the front seats, punched through the middle of the three rear seats, through the boot, burst the tailgate open and stuck out the rear of the car by several feet like a giant kebab. The spar was dislodged enough that the car came to rest overhanging the main M8, some 50 feet below, with only the offside wheels still on the flyover and the flapping spar bearing most of the car’s weight. When we arrived, the car was still slowly oscillating as if on a diving board.

Aside from a slight injury to his left arm, he was unscathed but the crash fair woke him up. Don’t think he was really aware of the chaos he caused to other road users or of how lucky he really was. Still booked him though 😀

Did he say why he’d fallen asleep/reason for it?

Another which made me smile. Colleagues attended a report of a low loader striking a railway bridge on the A8 at Langbank. The low loader had been carrying a bright yellow submersible from Greenock to Faslane. Someone had got their sums wrong and the top of the submersible struck the bridge at about 40mph, dislodging it from the trailer. The submersible landed on top of a Clio travelling behind, smashing the glass sunroof and pretty much destroying the car. The lady driver was trapped inside with her head poking through the hole where the sunroof had been. She was completely uninjured.

Would love to have seen her insurance claim. “I was driving along the A8 beside the Clyde when a yellow submarine landed on my car…” 🙂

Hora – Yeah, he put his hands up straight away to say he’d fallen asleep. He’d travelled down to Glasgow Airport to drop someone off for a flight and was heading back up north.

my mate ‘inspecting the wheel’ in the fast lane of a traffic-jammed M8, whilst actually having a sly slash, when several cars further up the queue opened their windows and waved their pinkie fingers in response 😆

A bloke who used to work for us. He said ‘I woke up looking at a steering wheel in my hands and it took me a while to figure out why I was holding a steering wheel- then the sound of the car tapping against the hardshoulder in the fast lane’ (brought him upto focus). He’d been out for a night drinking with his mate (who also used to work for us).

He confessed this to me when were out drinking ‘as I know what your response would be if I told you this when your sober’.

His plate and Fri/Sat night route home were reported.

Ooops wrong topic.

M25 both times for me,

1- Middle lane – (driving my soon to be married best mate home after his wedding rehersal) I’m faced with an entire cars exhaust system sat right across the entire lane, Arsey London Twunts wouldn’t give me the space to move to either of the other lanes, that was exciting…

2- Driving in the outside lane heading South towards Dartford me and the Van infront happened upon a step ladder opened up and stood upright neatly placed directly over the middle and outer lane separating line, required a bit of a wiggle towards the central reservation to avoid hitting it but otherwise not really in the way, just in a very odd place…

Craziest thing you have seen on a motorway?

People still sat in their broken down cars on the hardshoulder.

Someone who looked like they’d pulled over whilst their toddler pee’d next to the car. WTF! No matter what I wouldn’t stop- first stop would be up the nearest sliproad or let him/her piss allover the car seat.

People rejoining the motorway from the hardshoulder at circa 30mph immediately without building up speed first or using any sort of hazard or indicator.

Seen that a few times.

A silver people carrier with the livery of a very well known supplier of running and cycle race timing services, medals and trophies, and numbers for mountain bike races – with a driver more interested with something that was on his front passenger seat, or possibly even in the passenger footwell or glove box than the road of traffic around him. Mostly driving with two wheels on the hard shoulder but veering randomly from the hardshoulder the the middle lane, indicating occasionally in a direction counter the one he was drifting in. Followed him as he did this for 40 miles.

Odd. I wonder if it is the same supplier of timing services that I saw doing 80 in the middle lane of the M5 with the trailer tank slapping from the inside to outside lanes in the high winds?

Craziest for me was the chap on a sports bike on the M25, doing well north of a ton weaving through 4 lanes of crazy traffic, in nowt but a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. No lid, nowt. Must have been hell of a blast though. Probably just nicked the bike.

Attending a car fire on exit sliproad at Jnc 10 M56, we had 3 fire engines on scene and highways behind us to cone off the slip road while we dealt with incident…. car veers through the cones and drives over the hose i’m using. Police set off to have a word. 5 mins later, another car veers through the gap doing about 50 and nearly takes out HA lad and finally once we had put the car out and tidied up a bit, pull off in the pump and a car cuts in front of us and nearly clip the back of it. Cones are no safety barrier against the terminally stupid.

Driving along here

http://g.co/maps/jf9p6

then glancing to my right and seeing a car on the other side of the barrier, going in the same direction I was 😯

Attending a car fire on exit sliproad at Jnc 10 M56, we had 3 fire engines on scene and highways behind us to cone off the slip road while we dealt with incident…. car veers through the cones and drives over the hose i’m using. Police set off to have a word. 5 mins later, another car veers through the gap doing about 50 and nearly takes out HA lad and finally once we had put the car out and tidied up a bit, pull off in the pump and a car cuts in front of us and nearly clip the back of it. Cones are no safety barrier against the terminally stupid.

M60 permanent average camera section here in Manchester (due to the the death of 3 people when their car broke down on the bend). – anyway its clearly marked as an average cam 50 zone/lots of flashing lights etc etc and you still see people nailing it passed you, anchor on for the first av.cam then shoot off again.

Honestly -how thick* are people?

*Official figures are 460 drivers a month there are caught.

some small john deere tractors with bail lifters (like ride on lawn mower size) with some scaled down hay bales that had come off a trailor. I wanted there to be dwarves too, but i didnt see any.

later that day i saw a tornado in a field in somerset though, which was pretty sweet!

3 large plastic drum barrels flying out of a speed boat being towed ahead of me and all 3 bouncing down the carraigeway towards me. Thankfully all three missed, one very narrowly. That did wonders for the state of my underpants.

have had a ned throw a brick at my windscreen on the M6 through brum. Just whistled down the nearside.

Saw some dude in an R5 GT getting a nosh off his bird going up the A1 near Donny.

Couple of Pakistanis stopped dead in front of us on the M606 after my GF let the driver know what she thought of his driving via mime & silent speech. Then they got out, came up to the car & pretended to pop a cap at us with their fingers f***ing ***** c*nts.

While stuck in traffic in a rain storm from hell on the M4, crawling along, under a motorway bridge as the wind above battered everything in site.

20 yards in front of us, the roof of a industrial unit next to the motorway peel off its fixings and came crashing down into all 6 lanes of crawling traffic!

15-20 vehicles crushed, all 3 lanes blocked our side of the motorway & I think 2 lanes the other side, smashed to bits!

Most of the drivers under the bridge who were safe, including me, got out to help, some of the drivers who were not so lucky!

Mostly minor cuts and brusies thankfully, the rescue services arrived very quick considering, but still a very frightening situation to be in untill the rescue services took over.

A lady trapped in a smartcar was lucky, as the lorry took the weight of the roof stopping her from being crushed!

& guy in a MINI cabriolet that had its roof completly caved in, managed to crawl out without a scratch!

Maddest thing I spotted mind, was one of the many moron drivers, who was racing past on the hard shoulder, taking a flash picture as he passed!

I had both my kids in the car at the time, the youngest, was only 2 weeks old, If I had been 20 yards further up the road, who knows what would have happened to us, luck I guess, was on our side that night.

mccett – I know what you mean about that one. The number of times vehicles either take the works access or simply choose to ignore the fact that the road is closed it just staggering.

Working on a job on the M56-M53 link road one night a few weeks ago we had 4 vehicles do that very thing in 1 evening. Taxi drivers tend to be the worst at this IME.

Again in China, a few weeks ago. Evening rush hour, taxi ride to Shanghai on very busy 6 lane motorway with heavy rail and darkness.

Sudden increase in number of horns being blown and violent weaving of cars a few hundred yards ahead. Lots of brake lights, lots more horns. A few minutes later we trickle past the cause of the problem. Empty car stopped in fast lane. As we crawl past the car, we see the driver, business suit, standing in front of his car piddling on the Armco and proudly exhibiting his tackle to all onlookers.

I’m told this is quite common!

Not on a motorway but on a dual carriageway last night I had a lady trying to sideswipe me. At the lights further on her fella wound down his window and said ‘don’t you know what an indicator means’. I should have replied ‘oh yes, its an indication to other drivers not telling them to get out of the way its your road …but all I said was ‘are you **** stupid’?

I can remember going on holiday with my parents and we were flying from Manchester airport so we had to drive down from Scotland. On the way there on the motorway the weather was torrential rain and strong winds.

Somewhere on the M74, an idiot in a car in front threw a newspaper out the window which landed on our windscreen and stuck there due to the pissing rain. 😯

On the M62 West bound going down hill just after Saddleworth Moor I saw cars weaving & braking in front but could not see the reason until I got closer, it was a pair of Ducks & chicks waddling across the Motorway trying to get to the Big Reservoir which is on the left hand side.
It looked like they had aready made it across the other carraige safely and had only another 2 lanes to make it to the safety of the hard shoulder and grass banking. I managed to slow down enough to get around them and as I was driving off I looked in the mirror to check on their progress, unfortunately a White Van Man didn’t see them and the lasting image I got was feathers flying up into the Air 🙁

Workmen on the M1 acually working!!!!

When I used to ride motorbikes I had a a habit of riding a bit quick and one day while proceeding to a very important appointment at a rate of knots I was a bit surprised to be overtaken by someone on an R1. Now I was in triple figures with the numbers 3 & 5 in the read out so I was a bit surprised but the the thing that got me was the fact the guys helmet wasnt strapped on and he had lifted it up a little so that the dog end could hang out of his mouth 😯 How long he lived for is anyones guess!?

On the Sunday afternoon M5 once, hard braking all round followed by crawling past a 4×4 towing a horsebox jack knifed across lanes one and two. It had blown a tyre (horse seemed fine).

An armchair standing upright in lane one, and a couple of hundred metres up the road two blokes walking back up from their car and trailer to fetch it. They were in no particular hurry.

My regular favourite (saw him this morning in fact) is the guy who lifts his halfords special over a bridge and up onto the A4232 (not a motorway, but the kind of NSL dual carriageway I wouldn’t dream of riding a bike down) in morning rush hour, then cycles along it for about 1/2 mile and down a sliproad into Cardiff. No lights either, which makes him quite hard to spot at 7.45AM at this time of year 😯