FINDING ANSWERS AT THE CRASH SCENE
EVERY week, 500 people are killed or seriously injured on the UK’s roads and it’s the job of a small group of police officers to find out what really happened at the scene.
Using only debris or vehicles left at the scene, witness statements and video footage, the crash investigators have just hours to discover the truth.
Sergeant Bob Witherall, 36, is part of the four-strong team making up Gwent Police Collision Investigation Team.
Based at police headquarters in Cwmbran, the team attends crashes in a force area covering 600 square miles.
The team, made up of PC Chris Goddard, PC Richie Wyatt, Sergeant Bob Witherall and PC Tony Parker, deals with more than 100 crashes every year, and have 40 years’ experience between them of investigating crashes around the clock.
Now the team is featuring on a new BBC show that goes behind the cordon to reveal the story behind each crash.
Although all accidents are different, the team will be on the lookout for certain things when they get to the scene.
They all have to start somewhere – and their first visit to a collision can be terrifying.
“It’s nerve-wracking,” Sergeant Witherall said. “You’re always worried about missing something or not getting things right, but you’re trained. For your first few collisions, you also have a mentor.”
But what exactly does entail?
“It’s a thorough and detailed process and about getting the right result in the end,” he said. “That’s the best thing.
“Every collision is different but you do adhere to a certain methodology. the job
“You want to turn up and ensure the right cordons are in place and assess when the collision occurred.
“You’re looking, getting down on your hands and knees sometimes, for things like tyre marks and fibres.
“It’s a case of working your way through the scene. We also put markers and document that and photograph it and survey it.
“It’s going into everything in great detail.”
The job can be hard – especially when witnesses and the evidence say very different things.
Sgt Witherall said: “Quite often these collisions occur at a fraction of a second. They happen so quickly sometimes witness evidence isn’t quite right. But the physical evidence speaks for itself.
“We can establish things like the position of the vehicle and the collision dynamics. They give a very good account and description of what actually happened.
“It’s quite often the case that people say they’re travelling at say 30mph and we can say ‘yes, you were’ or ‘no, you weren’t’.”
One crash that features in the first episode of the show is a fatal crash that happened in Blaenavon in September 2016.
Grandmother Ray Jones, 50, died when the driver of a Volvo C70 crashed into the Kawasaki motorbike she was on with her husband Brian near a petrol station on the B4246 Abergavenny Road.
Mrs Jones went into cardiac arrest and died at the scene. She had been celebrating her upcoming wedding anniversary with her husband on the day of the crash.
The driver of the Volvo, John Morgan, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and was sentenced to four years in prison, as well as being disqualified from driving for six years.
In his first interview with police, Morgan told officers: “All I can say is I didn’t see the bike.”
Morgan is shown saying during a police interview that he looked both ways before pulling out of the petrol station.
But investigating officer PC Richie Wyatt disagreed. Speaking in the aftermath of the crash, he said: “The pressure is on. It’s difficult. Somebody has lost their loved one and if somebody is at fault, that’s my job to establish those facts and prove who is responsible.
“At the moment, what we’re establishing from witnesses is that the vehicle has pulled out without looking, without stopping.”
Later, after looking at CCTV, he said: “What I found at the scene is consistent with the CCTV.”
The team also recreated the crash to see what the driver of the Volvo would have and would not have seen coming out of the garage, using cameras mounted to the front of the Volvo and a motorbike.
They discovered that the driver would have seen the bike from 40 metres away if he had looked.
The team is also helped by the advancement in technology such as dash cams, which are used to record footage from a vehicle.
Sgt Witherall said: “Dash cam footage is being more prevalent, as is CCTV, but the collision dynamics remain the same.
“Video footage in any form is prime evidence. It captures exactly what happened.”
The first episode of the Crash Detectives airs on BBC One Wales tomorrow at 8.30pm.