Investigation into police response before a road traffic collision – Humberside Police, March 2023

Humberside Police’s force control room received a number of calls about a stationary car with no lights on sitting in the live lane of a dual carriageway. Motorists called 999 after avoiding a collision. 

The force control room requested police attend the incident and sought the assistance of Highways England, who were unavailable at the time. 

A suitable police unit was sent to the scene. However, a lorry collided with the back of the stationary car before the police unit arrived. The driver of the stationary car and their young son were both killed. 

The IOPC investigated Humberside Police’s response to the calls and whether that response was in line with local and national policies and procedures. 

Our investigators took statements from control room staff and police officers. We also studied the 999 calls made by members of the public, as well as police radio transmissions.

We concluded there was no indication that a person serving with the police committed a criminal offence or behaved in a manner justifying the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.

In this case, we did not make learning recommendations as Humberside Police had already reviewed their response to this incident and decided to update their fast roads training package. They are awaiting approval of an updated policy to provide further fast road training to non-traffic and armed response vehicle officers. 

Improvements to the computer systems used in the force control room have also been proposed, including force incident managers receiving an automatic alert whenever an incident is reported on a fast road.