Fatal road traffic collision - South Wales Police, August 2018

In the early hours on 29 August 2018, South Wales Police officers in three marked police cars attended the vicinity of Briton Ferry Road, Neath with the intention of attending a property to deal with an incident.

Unrelated to the reason they were in the area, a man pulled out sharply in a car in front of one of the police vehicles and drove off at speed with the headlights of his vehicle switched off. Two of the police vehicles followed the car, while the third continued travelling to the original incident.

The man collided with the side wall of a house approximately 13 seconds after pulling away in his car, believed to have lost control of his car.

Our investigators reviewed accounts from a number of witnesses, including the officers involved. They also reviewed CCTV footage from the shop and at the crash scene. We also examined dashcam footage from one of the police vehicles, vehicle tracking information from all three police vehicles and police body-worn video footage.

At no point during the investigation was there any indication that any person serving with the police may have committed a criminal offence, or behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

We completed our investigation in January 2019 but waited until the inquest into the man’s death had taken place before publishing its outcome. The coroner concluded that the cause of death was a road traffic collision.