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[cleggy]

Following an accident why do the police close a road for hours.
I guess there must be a reason and our members will explain but it seems OTP to me, and I don't mean motorways just normal roads.

[Lizzie_Zoom]

Following an accident why do the police close a road for hours.
I guess there must be a reason and our members will explain but it seems OTP to me, and I don't mean motorways just normal roads.

One for Jason I think

However, I do know it is often due to the need to gather evidence when either a life has been lost, or there is a likelihood of a fatality later after a person has been taken to hospital with life threatening injuries.

The road has to be extensively measured, photographed, with all vehicles involved first marked out until removed to a secure pound for eventual forensic inspection.

All this information is gathered to aid prosecution or/ and for the coroners report, but in any case if it goes to court the evidence must be comprehensive and accurate to secure a conviction.

I also am aware that some traffic units at least are now using very sophisticated laser mapping devices to greatly speed up the surveying of the scene, and this should greatly shorten the time roads are closed

[cleggy]

Yes, but Lizzie's they do if for hours.

[Lizzie_Zoom]

Yes, but Lizzie's they do if for hours.

But sometimes Cleggy that is what it takes. Apart from the gathering of evidence from the police point of view, it can take a very long time to extract badly injured people, or dead bodies that again need respectful, but accurate recording of their position within the vehicle and it's surroundings.

 We must not forget either that sometimes road repairs are required,along with the clearance of all debris, including the washing off of blood etc.

I well remember one of my nights out with a patrol when we had to close a road with a junction where a 4x4 had taken out a telegraph pole, with wires falling all over the roads. 3 hours of diverting traffic later the engineers turned up! In the meantime a drunken driver had almost run over two offices manning the opposite side of the junction to me, and that prolonged the event still further!

[hotel21]

I used to be a police crash investigator and am university qualified in that regard as well as classed as an expert witness in such matters in court proceedings.

It is always easier to categorise a crime scene at its most serious (murder most foul?) rather than a backhander across the mouth when, if the victim subsequently dies as a result of the backhander,  to try to recreate the evidential crime scene after several hundred or ore peoe/vehicles have tramped through it. if that makes sense.

If a crash scene is categorised as 'likely to prove' (fatal) then it is treated as a major crime scene.

It's easier to scale such things downwards than upwards.

To use a total survey system (geodimeter or similar) to accurately scale locus and its debris, brake wheel marks and resultant positions etc does take time. A handful of hours is easily a regular timescale.

Compare the time that the White paper boiler suited staff take under a plastic tent outside a house in a local housing estate where a body is found and transpose that response to the M6 Southbound or similar and reassess.

Perhaps not the clearest of explanations but it's been a long day for me and kinda tired.

[Crazycarzowner]

^^^^^^

What H21 said 

[05omegav6]

Next time the 'inconvenience' annoys you, consider the parents of these two girls...

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-30462001

 

[cleggy]

No it doesn't cause me a problem, I just wondered why it took so long.

Thanks for the explanations it makes it clear to me now.

There was an accident last week on the main road at the bottom of our close, some one was not in good state having been run over.
The road was obviously closed for the emergency vehicles but didn't reopen for 5 hours later and neighbours were questioning as to why I thought I'd ask those in the know.

[Lizzie_Zoom]

Next time the 'inconvenience' annoys you, consider the parents of these two girls...

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-30462001

 

Oh dear, so many lives wrecked yet again!