FIVE DIE AS POLE DRIVES WRONG WAY ON UK MOTORWAY

Just seen this on BBC news....A polish registered car traveling the wrong way on the M1 motorway has crashed head on into another car , and as a result five people have died ....

They don,t say as yet if the driver of the Polish car was in fact Polish , but it looks like he wasn,t from the UK to be driving against oncoming traffic on a motorway...

Whatever his nationality , or hers , it looks like a tragic mistake that has cost five lives...

Probably the driver got onto a roundabout , maybe a bit tired , and forgot for one moment that they were in th UK , and headed down an exit sliproad against the flow of traffic....an easy mistake to make if you are driving in the UK for the first time. , and a little tired..

Tragic...

Apr 19, 09, 12:00 - Thread attached on merging:
'wrong way' pole


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8006605.stm

Thanks Espana....i don,t know how to post links...

It just doesn't make sense how the car could have been driving in the wrong direction. Motorways are accessed by sliproads that join at an angle to feed into the traffic. Anyone attempting to get onto a motorway the wrong way would find this very difficult. It is possible that the car had actually turned round, maybe as a result of already having collided with something (there were lane closures due to roadworks) or as a result of how the traffic had been managed around these roadworks. This was on a stretch of the M1 that runs alongside Luton - it wasn't someone who had just got off the ferry or anything like that.

It is still a tragedy in which five people have lost their lives, in both the Polish VW Passat and in the Jag with which it collided. A subject that should not be taken flippantly. RIP.

This is what the police seem to be thinking....very sad....

The police have said that the driver of the Polish car has next of kin in Poland , but they have not been informed yet....

You just copy and paste them from the address bar.


Exactly, the angles are all wrong on a motorway, in any country, for it to be easy for someone to end up going in the wrong direction.

On the motorway near Szczecin during the road works it was very easy to wind up going the wrong way as the few signs that were placed there were very confusing , even the Polish drivers were getting in a muddle...

Don't understand that! The angles are right, taking you into the flow the traffic not against it. The only time you could be going the wrong way, is if you were to do a U turn.

It sounds as though the police think this is what happened....

That was what I meant, it's not easy to do to end up going the wrong way on a motorway.

Why on earth would anyone do a U turn on a motorway ? It makes no sense.

Some idiots when they come off an exit too early, try to turn back!

It's highly illegal anyway. Logic would tell you not to do that.

I do wonder if I know this person. I hope not, but it does sound horribly familiar....;)

Occasionally when ive been travelling i get a mind block as to what side i should be driving on but thats generally the issue you sort at the beginning of a drive not half way up a motorway.

If the lane had indeed been filtered down to one, it may have been lot easier to turn around and then become confused with all the cones. What amazes me is that both cars where unable to avoid eachother with headlights on, maybe they both turned the same way just before impact.

Why do you find it funny?

It makes you wonder for sure.

Best edit that one filios

well apart from 5 deaths....it could have been amusing..;} maybe I am just sick..

It has to be said this Polish dead idiot has cost 5 innocent people there lives through his ignorance. unfortunately I see and hear stories like this all the time in Poland.

Why?


I doubt you would be saying the same if it had been one of your loved ones in either of the cars...


When you havn't slept in, say, 3 days, get back to me. I know how easily these things happen. This man could have been tired from work, an insomniac, whatever. He made a horrible mistake, and 5 other people payed for it, but I don't think calling him an idiot is warranted.

is what I said Filios, Mr Half Quoter...:}

Plus if you haven't slept in 3 days, dont drive...:)

Because she didnt say it was funny, who would?



Come on driving up the wrong side of the motorway, what would you call him? he probably thought christmas had arrived ealry the miniute he got on the M1.

Lifes circumstances sometimes don't allow for that... Who knows where he was going.


She put a smiley face at the end of the sentence, and then she called it amusing... Close enough in my books.


I would call it an idiotic mistake, but I wouldn't call the man an idiot... He's dead, you don't know who he was, and what he was capable of.

:@)...the road to hell.....

I said IT COULD HAVE BEEN AMUSING IF FIVE PPL HADNT DIED!!!!!!

ITS A CONDITIONAL

More importantly where was he coming from? Poland by the sounds of it, can be done in about 12 hours from Wroclaw to London ive done it. Where did you get 3 days from?

Any reports if he had been drinking?


If he had killed himself you are quite right but thats not the case here. My wife is a nervous wreck on teh roads over here and no its not my driving i always drive slow with her. Its the Polish drivers putting i and my wifes lives at risk, they are a lot worse than idiots, thinking their hard and all that.

They have no right to endanger my life. Its just far to common.

If you are drunk or very tired, you shouldn't be driving and instinct should tell you that you are doing the wrong thing. Driving the wrong way is quite obvious and I question if he even had a driving/drivers licence.

Harm to self is usually self-induced. Harm to others, different story.

I've found it remarkably easy to get myself into trouble on Polish motorways - particularly at night and on the permanently-dug-up A4. The signage can be confusing, inconsistent and unclear, and I've seen all sorts of antics (people doing u-turns, overtaking on the inside, stopping for a pee, cyclists, pedestrians...). It wouldn't surprise me if these people had realised they were going the wrong way and done a u-turn - just like you do back home. Tragic.

Four innocent lives....the fith was their own....

The thing is, it wasn't "back home" so he had to adapt to the new conditions. Pull right off the road if you are unsure. Had he actually read The Highway Code, he would've known that you can't U-turn on a motorway.

The thing is , driving in the UK is quite different to driving in Poland , first time i came to Poland on route to Belarus i found myself in many situations where i was confused as to which way to go , or who was supposed to give way to who , add this to the confusion of driving on the other side of the road for the first time , and you have the potential makings of a disaster....In my case i had previous experiance of driving on the other side of the road , and many years as a profesional driver , so i was able to bluff my way through it all without putting my life or any others at risk...This accident in the UK may have occurred because a young and inexperianced driver newly arrived in the UK tried to do something that they may have got away with in Poland , or simply got confused...At night its a lot more easy to make such a mistake...