DD has been stuck on the M5 for 6 hours

[GinForBreakfast]

I know there's been a serious incident but you can't leave people stuck on a motorway for 6 hours. That will include elderly people and tiny children. In other countries they manage to clear the roads far quicker.

No sign of anything moving and even once she does she's still 4 hours from home.

My comments weren't aimed at you directly so this isn't about anything you've said in particular. There's an air of superiority and boastfulness on this thread that many have noticed. I find it worrying to witness such confidence when compared to what I've seen of the reality of being delayed.

I agree with you that people should make some preparations for being stuck in their car. But it's not the panacea it's being touted to be. Expect the unexpected. That's all.

I find it worrying to witness such confidence when compared to what I've seen of the reality of being delayed.

There, I absolutely agree with you. I know that I can't prepare for everything.

In respect of your "traffic queue with captions" picture, I can't show you the picture I have because it's burned on my brain and not stored in any camera.

My sister, in her teens, fell from a two metre ladder onto concrete and hit her head on a garden wall on the way down. The picture in my head, the visual memory, is of her intubated and on a drip in an induced coma, her head bandaged and her face bruised. The emotions I felt back then were gut-wrenching terror that she might die and fear that she might be brain-damaged. She still has some hearing loss in her right ear and has gaps in her childhood memories.

This girl on the M5 bridge fell much further and is almost certainly more badly injured. Her family will be as terrified as I was. She will almost certainly have lifetime sequelae. If she jumped, she already had significant mental illness in addition to the injuries she incurred and her family will be wondering what they did wrong and what they missed, guilt on top of terror. I cannot, with my own memories of my sister in my head, feel more sympathy for people who merely got hungry and had to pee into an empty bottle than for this girl and her family.

My sister was transferred from our local A&E to a specialist head injury unit, on the other side of a river. A delay in traffic would have risked her life, so I understand that delays can kill. To prevent that risk, the bridge over the river was closed to all other traffic whilst her ambulance crossed it. I imagine that closing the bridge meant that a lot of drivers were pissed off that day too. Tough, someone was critically injured and needed the bridge more. The same was true on the M5 yesterday.

I'm sorry to hear that. I can understand why that would make you feel strongly that this should be a priority over other road users. I agree with you it needs to be a priority.

I don't believe sympathy is a finite resource that can only be doled out to the very most worthy though. Misery isn't a competition.

A little more explanation about what happened.

www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/police-explain-m5-road-closure-9807037

I carry a lot of stuff to mitigate this sort of thing. Water, toilet facilities and loo roll, packets of Frosties and lots of hardware as well as sleeping bags and stuff.

You can get compact versions of everything nowadays and it takes away a lot of the worry of a 'what if' situation.

If only the police had had a few experts from Mumsnet on hand, to provide their considerable experience of how it would have been handled in other countries.

@EmotionalSupportCuttlefish What toilet facilities do you cart around in case of emergencies. You have specified toilet facilities AND toilet roll so am intrigued. I’m imagining Hermione Granger pulling a toilet out of that magical tote bag she had.

If you don't carry a she wee or a portable toilet with you everywhere you're woefully unprepared according to many posters. I don't know anyone in real life who does this.

I had to piss in a soup bowl once. So that was nice.

I reckon I could manage it into an empty coffee cup, but I'd ask the other occupants of the car to step outside (in their emergency ponchos if necessary) and stand with their backs to the car doors.

I reckon I could manage it into an empty coffee cup, but I'd ask the other occupants of the car to step outside (in their emergency ponchos if necessary) and stand with their backs to the car doors

If you are a man, I understand this. If you are a woman, would you not be the one getting out of the car to use the coffee cup? I’m female and I’m trying to think of female anatomy, doing a wee, and the angle of sitting on a car seat. Maybe I’m just really uncoordinated, but seems like standing up outside the car would be better?

@BadLad it doesn’t take away from the fact that in a great number of countries both carriageways would not have remained closed for so long to facilitate the collection of forensic evidence.

You'd have to shove the front seats forward, disrobe a bit, and sit on the edge of the back seat between the front seats, I reckon.

I'd not piss outside on the side of the road because of twats with mobile phone cameras and instant access to Tik Tok, unless I could be properly screened with blankets/coats held up round me.

I realise this is now getting wildly off topic.

It’s not a fact. It’s conjecture that people have pulled out of their arses.

I always thought the best way was to open passenger side front and back door and squat in between, being shielded by the doors from the front and back.

@badlad Australia, USA and Japan are 3 countries for starters which would not keep both carriageways closed for that length of time on the back of an incident of this type.

In most countries a closure of this length would only be in the event of a chemical / toxic spill or a multiple vehicle pile up.

I carry a tiny plastic loo. It's brilliant.

After having to shit in a sandwich box on the M42, I decided to get a little more organised.

Traffic incidents in England rarely cause this level of delay.

To compare the response with that of other countries you would need the same accident circumstances in the same weather conditions and the same traffic density. We don’t actually know much about the circumstances and what has to be investigated, unless you are part of the investigating team. So any comparison with other countries is pure speculation.

I have no experience of driving in the US or Australia, but traffic jams in Japan can be absolutely horrendous. They have worse motorways than we do.

@BadLad so if the length of closure of both carriageways in this case was unusually long (and the fact that it made press confirms this) it doesn’t seem unreasonable for people to query it.

A lot of posters think everyone should just suck everything up which to some degree explains why so many of our public services are so awful.

Query away - I don’t believe I’ve said anything against anybody doing that.

You seem to be agreeing with me here that this delay was unusually long, so it isn’t the norm by which the response time in England should be measured. We don’t know why this one took so long to clear.

I think it depends on where you live and the journeys you take and your attitude to preparedness.

I am the person that would come along and have all the kit to pull you out of a ditch for example though.

Some people hear “unusually long delay” and assume that it must have been bad then, the long closure must have been necessary for the authorities to do what was needed.

others hear “unusually long delay” and assume it must have been that the authorities were incompetent, should have opened it sooner and it was unnecessary.

2 types of people…

@EmotionalSupportCuttlefish brings new meaning to "shit sandwich" 😀

Arf - yes. DH keeps fishing tackle in it now.

When you gotta go, you gotta go.

@Billydavey there's also a third type of person, who sees something working sub-optimally and thinks the people involved need support to improve it.

DH spoke to the highways agency on the evening of the incident and they were also unhappy with the situation so 🤷🏻‍♀️