So sad.

The fatality that occurred on Thursday morning on the A55 was extremely sad, and naturally, everyone wishes the family concerned their best.  What was worrying, however, was the way in which the Police reacted to the incident and the way in which it failed to be reported by almost anyone.

The police had vast amounts of time to organise the traffic flows, yet managed to stall traffic completely for almost three hours.  Let's look at what happened.

The accident occurred in the early hours. It was a fatac, so the Police had to close the A55.  This meant that in the rush hour - 8 - 9 am - vast numbers of vehicles would find themselves being routed off the A55 at two points:  Black Cat and Conwy.  If we look for a moment at the Black Cat situation, we're tempted to ask why on earth the police didn't institute some kind of traffic control. The traffic pouring off the A55 onto the roundabout effectively closed the roundabout to traffic coming from Glan Conwy - a bottleneck at the best of times. Did it not occur to anyone in the Police that the presence of a bobby directing traffic, so every one had a fair chance of moving, would have been a good idea? Instead, a five mile long tailback formed though Glan Conwy, jamming the roads solid and increasing driver consternation to record levels. All it needed to alleviate an incredibility confused situation was a couple of bobbies directing traffic - alternately holding the A55 crowd up and allowing the Glan Conwy traffic to move forward.

If there had been an emergency requiring an ambulance at that time, heaven knows what would have happened.

Possibly the more dispiriting issue, however, was the utter lack of any mention of such a catastrophic event on the TV.  Local radio mentioned it, but the BBC and ITV didn't even feature it in their regional news and ITV didn't even think it worthy of a mention on their regional teletext. Seems the North - South divide is alive and well.