The BBC story said yesterday that a call had been received about it, but no officers sent. If that’s correct then that’s a control room error/matter. I would expect someone to be sent to check the area following a call like that – it’s a regular occurrence.

This is something that irks me something rotten when we watch Motorway Cops or something. Why don’t they speak English? I am on Northwind’s side with the “language evolves” stuff but the way they talk is almost unintelligible. It’s clearly stupid people (referring only to the ones on the show, not all police, obvs) trying to sound clever.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5HD9820jrk[/video]

I’d imagine that more likely is that someone driving past noticed a car in the trees and presumably thought that it would have been dealt with previously. Hence they called 101 or whatever it is rather than 999.

Terrible situation, seems the person that received the info either ignored it or thought “I’ll sort that in 2 mins after I finish this cuppa……………………….ahhhh, now where was I?”

Either way, not good. You’d also have to say incredibly unlucky of the occupants for this all to happen.

If I’d seen an accident, I would pull over in the hard shoulder and walk/run back as far away from the road as possible whilst phoning 999. Seems though that there wasn’t a crash barrier where this happened, just a drop down a bank into trees.

I thought it was probably someone seeing it leave the road and phoning in, but the car then coming to rest out of sight of the road, explaining why they didn’t get any more calls about it, which IME is what normally happens. Just my guess though.

EDIT Looks like the wrong guess

We know that just prior to 11.30am on Sunday 5th July 2015 a member of the public contacted Police Scotland via the 101 system to report that they could see a vehicle down an embankment near the M9 slip road at Bannockburn.

All callers to 101 receive an electronic options menu. This call was answered within 6 seconds following that message by an experienced officer and the relevant details were given by the caller.

For reasons yet to be established this call was not entered onto our police systems and not actioned out to operational teams in the Stirling area to respond and trace the vehicle.

Shortly before 10am on 8th July 2015 a second call was made to Police Scotland via the 101 system. This call was answered, recorded and allocated to operational teams who located Mr Yuill and Ms Bell within their car.

Chief Constable’s statement

You can’t fight evolution, language isn’t a preserved exhibit in a glass case. Differences that make no difference are no difference, and personally I’m happy to see them given exactly that much consideration.

The language has gone through teh change.

There was an interesting debate recently about an underground silo for storing nuclear waste in Finland regarding what signage /warnings / symbols to put on and in the facility, and particularly what language they should be in – the bunker has been designed to last for 100,000 years. Finnish language has only been around for 3500 years, English is only about 1500 years old and the bunker will last twice as long as the whole history of all ‘modern human behaviour’ let alone language so what message would remain legible for 100,000 years?

‘Totes radioactive!!!!1111one11. Soz. Loooool’