Useless plod.

A friend works for BT, often gets the phone call at 3am when someone rams into a pole, gets there but is then told he can't do anything until they've measured the skid marks, photographed everything and the meatwagon has taken the ex-driver away ... he doesn't mind it's all overtime.

If it was politically correct then it was an RTC, not an RTA.

If your power is down, how come you can still inflict your views on us?

OP took nearly 4 hours to appear here, so maybe it came by carrier pidgeon

On 06/10/2021 10:28, The Natural Philosopher wibbled incontinently:

I am not one of the 4 households right by the downed power wire. And I am not inflicting a view. merely reporting an issue

You didn't know that most 11KV circuits are rings? so cut the power, and isolate the fault section, put the power back on , fix the section, power cut for a few seconds while isolators are reconnected, and power on again. But of course I could have used a smart phone as a 4g wifi router and a laptop to type all this.

they have just texted to say PC plod has finished, only 8 hours later, and they can now fix the fault...

Remember an incident where someone was run down by a train. The corpse couldn't be removed until a doctor had been to certify that the victim was dead.

In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, at 17:18:02 on Wed, 6 Oct 2021, Peter Johnson snipped-for-privacy@parksidewood.nospam remarked:

Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"

Witness: "No."

Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"

Witness: "No."

Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"

Witness: "No."

Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"

Witness: "No."

Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"

Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."

Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"

Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."

This must be Essex Police - any accident during the night and they close the road until the people who can take photos start work at 9 am and then they cannot get to the scene because the road has been closed for rush hour.

I hardly think that is what they actually said, but it is probably the accident investigators doing their job before letting the fixers in. This highlights the dangers of overhead cabling for the mains. I remember in the paper a couple of years ago an over height load went down a street out in Cobham somewhere taking with it the mains cable to a close and all the telephone lines before the driver noticed. Brian

This also happened when my then-GF was at Salisbury. Fire wanted death confirmed as cutting out the victim would be difficult and take a long time; cutting for just a corpse was a lot easier. She had to wear all the PPE and said that it would have been simple without that - with it, getting in and out was very awkward.

Even better where I live. About 3 years ago one August, a tractor was pulling a load of those big rectangular bales of straw, and probably a bit too high but part of his earlier route from the field took him through a village of older houses. As the trailer passed under some low voltage (240v) copper cables they were pushed up and touched with the inevitable sparks that set the straw on fire. Driver continued for about 3 miles before a car over- took him and flagged him down. By then the trailer was well ablaze, to they just unhitched the £120K John Deere tractor and let it burn. It melted a big patch of the road and made a mess of some nice mature trees in someones garden.

Andrew

Today someone was killed by a truck right outside Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge.

They shut the road for 7 hours to investigate.

I wonder how many patients in ambulances died in the jam?

Andy

I'd guess that no patients died, as there are several ways in.

But doubtless hundreds of patients without the benefit of blue lights on their roofs, delayed to the point their appointments were cancelled. And the untreated conditions potentially leading to adverse consequences.

It was a petrol tanker, so plenty of people were annoyed even if they weren't held up the actual accident. Victim was a cyclist though.

In message <sjpduv$m8m$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org>, at 13:35:43 on Fri, 8 Oct

Reported also to be a worker at the hospital.

"A woman has died following a rush hour collision with a petrol tanker near a hospital.

The cyclist, who was in her 20s, was struck by the white lorry just before 8am near Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge this morning.

The HGV driver, a 27-year-old man from Hertford, Hertfordshire, has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving."

I have to say that the traffic management at the nearby road works the last couple of weeks on Long Road has been abysmal. Is this the same contractors?

I agree that there are adverse consequences arising from investigating an accident, but this is one where someone died. I don't accept 'useless plod' in such circumstances. It is clearly necessary that the accident is properly investigated.

"Could have done it faster", possibly, but it's daft to say that without knowing what constraints applied.

A common complaint is that they needn't have closed off quite so much road for quite so long, while also failing to have some non-accident-investigating colleagues help direct the traffic, rather than being left to its own devices.