Pursuit of car prior to a road traffic collision – West Yorkshire Police, April 2022

On 18 April 2022, a Skoda being driving on cloned plates failed to stop for West Yorkshire Police (WYP) officers when requested to do so. A suitably trained member of police staff in the WYP control room authorised a pursuit of the Skoda. During the pursuit, the Skoda entered the roundabout at junction 40 of the M1 motorway where it continued to fail to stop and tried to enter the motorway slip road against the flow of traffic.

Police officers attempted to stop the Skoda from carrying out this manoeuvre, however, this proved unsuccessful and the Skoda continued down the slip road and joined the motorway against the flow of traffic.

A short time later, the Skoda collided with a BMW being driven by a member of the public correctly with the flow of traffic. All three occupants of the Skoda and the driver of the BMW suffered serious injuries.

We obtained accounts from the police officers involved in the pursuit. We also examined audio recordings, incident logs and police in-car CCTV footage. We considered the officers’ actions alongside local and national police policies, procedures and guidance and found that they had complied with them as required.

Our investigation concluded there was no indication the officers may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence. All officers were treated as witnesses and cooperated fully with this investigation.

We concluded our investigation in August 2022 and shared our report with WYP who agreed with our findings. The man subsequently pleaded guilty to various driving offences including causing serious injury by dangerous driving, causing serious injury while driving while disqualified and driving without insurance.

In October 2022, the man was sentenced to 43 months in prison and banned from driving.

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 no learning was identified.