RTC

RTC used to be RTA. RTA used to mean Road Traffic Accident; it could also mean Road Traffic Act (any law relating to motoring). A driver who works a lot of over time has to be careful of the RTA concerning driver's hours. Any way the police not too long ago decided that of the half a million incidents on our roads here in the UK that resulted in death, injury or just damage to vehicles, very few, maybe a couple of hundred were actually accidents. So now they are called RTCs, Road Traffic Collisions.

OK. Now this morning I was running through a few thoughts for a post coming up next month and I realised how few accidents, sorry RTCs I had actually seen happen. I have arrived at the scattered wreckage and the police car and ambulance and on a couple of occasions the fire engine but have been there at the moment of impact very few times when you consider the number of miles I have driven in the last 46 years. Now this afternoon I was siting on a low wall down on the Newton Road waiting to take over a bus. The traffic was very heavy going into Torquay what with it being Bank Holiday weekend. (It's going to rain by the way.) The road in front of me is two lane but there are traffic lights ahead and if you want to go straight on you have to be in the left lane. The guy driving the car in the outside lane just turned his wheel to move into the left lane without any interest in the fact that there was already a car in the nearside lane. CRASH! Right in front of me. I didn't even have to stand up to take the photo.



The passenger of the car in the nearside got out and spoke to the driver of the other car and indicated that he should move his car to the side of the road for the exchange of details. The car driver in the outside lane then moved forward slowly and pulled into the left lane, which was what he wanted to do in the first place. I put the camera back in my back thinking the action was over. We then all watched dumbfounded as the car continued up the road and vanished slowly (still heavy traffic remember) into the distance. I think you get 6 penalty points on your licence for leaving the scene of an accident.

Anyway there was me thinking I hadn't seen an accident for ages and then I see one. A little note to the powers that organise these sort of coincidences, I have had a Premium Bond for almost fifty years and have never won a prize yet.