Would you call 101 or 999 for obstruction on a motorway?

[Medwaymumoffour]

In the distant past I have called 999 for big things on the motorway lane ( think whole tyres, bushes fallen off a lorry etc).

Now I would call 101, but recently after not being able to get through on three attempts after seeing a wheelbarrow of the middle lane I gave up)

I saw a complete tyre on the motorway way and didn’t call anyone as I wasnt sure who to call ( I’m always a passenger when I call).

What do other people do?

Thanks @MagentaRocks

999 for something in the carriageway.

101 for pedestrians.

Thanks for that. I will go back to calling 999 in future.

I've called 999 three times when driving - once when there was a cardboard box on the motorway, once when an old lady had parked on the hard shoulder and once when four lads were in a car going the wrong way down a dual carriageway. That was very, very scary.

That said I think 999 call centres are set up so that if the number of available call handlers drops to zero everyone on a non urgent call hangs up so they are available again.

This is absolutely not true. We can't just simply hang up the phone even if it is a non emergency call. The 9s calls will que until someone is finished with a call and they will then take the 9s call.

Also Magenta in my force we are categorically not allowed to tell people to ring 101 because it just shifts the demand, so if they're reporting a non urgent incident/crime we must take enough details for a report and then send it over to a designated member of staff who then deals with it.

And also yes OP anything for the motorway should always be 999.

Dinosaur isn’t it strange how different forces are different for this.

Magenta not strange really no, not really any need to be snippy, I was just highlighting that what you put is not always the case 🤷‍♀️

Dinosaur I wasn’t being snippy. I was genuinely saying it is strange that the same job is different in different forces as you would think it would be the same. I know it is different in different forces as we interact with other forces so I already knew. It doesn’t mean I can’t find it strange it is so different. I don’t know where you got that I was being snippy from what I said.

I don't know how @DinosaurPoop took that @MagentaRocks was being snipey either! If anything Dinisaur was...

Anyway... My incorrect assumption about how non urgent calls are hung up on if there aren't any other handlers free was from something I read about the Grenfell fire. So perhaps it varies between the emergency services too.

Thanks to Magenta for enlightening me.

Just seemed a bit eye rolly to me that's all, apologies, can't always get the tone over the internet.

Do you just do 9s Magenta or do you do 101 too? Perhaps that's the difference as we do both.

And I would have thought that was because Grenfell was such a major incident giraffe.

It honestly wasn’t eye rolly.

We do both. I supervise the call handlers that do this job and I have to do a plan to show who is on what at what times so I will make sure i have enough people on 999s and all the other stuff like live chat, emails etc and then the rest do the 101s. I try to make sure that everyone has something other than 101 all day as I know it is difficult spending the whole shift dealing with call after call on non urgent.

Last time I saw something in the road (rolled up piece of carpet) I called highways (0300 123 5000). Got through straight away as they have a dedicated line for obstructions.

I’m a call handler.

ANYTHING on the motorway = 999.
Including sheep grazing on the verge - wouldn’t take much to spook them and then they’d be all over the road and it only takes 1 vehicle to swerve to cause a pile up...

I called 101 for a swan on the dual carriageway, they put me through to 999