Appeal Following Near Miss On The A55
Police are appealing for witnesses to come forward following an incident on the A55 in which a traffic management officer was nearly hit by a motorist who ignored a road block.
At around 2pm on Monday April 18 North and Mid-Wales Trunk Road Agency traffic management officers attended an incident on the A55 westbound between junctions 10 and 9, the Tesco off slip and Parc Menai, Bangor.
It involved an elderly man who was trying to retrieve a large fencing panel that had fallen off his vehicle.
The officers set up a rolling block from Junction 10 towards Junction 9 and then put a complete block on to the A55 to deal with the incident safely.
They activated a roof bar light with the bi-lingual message; “Do not pass this vehicle” and also placed a static illuminated sign warning of an incident ahead. The traffic vehicle was positioned across the central white lines.
A queue formed in lane one. There were no vehicles in lane two.
As one officer went to deal with the incident the other officer left her vehicle to approach the drivers of the first few cars to advise them to remain where they were and to explain what was happening.
As she was doing this a driver pulled out from the static line of cars in lane one, moved into lane two and accelerated into the gap between the NMWTRA vehicle and the central crash barrier.
The officer was forced to jump back and pin herself up against the side of her vehicle to avoid being struck.
The offender, in a silver Mercedes, slowed down for a moment before accelerating away westbound.
PC Dave Thomas said; “This was an extremely dangerous manoeuvre. To breach a rolling road block is an offence which in this case could have had disastrous consequences. I am appealing to any of the motorists who witnessed this incident to contact police on 101 quoting reference RC16055497.”
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