Channel 5 show to focus on National Highways’ work as traffic officers celebrate 20th anniversary

Photo: Channel 5 Fearless Television

Traffic officers Sharon Mitchell and Tony Monaghan dealing with an incident on the M62

New Channel 5 series ‘The Motorway’ will focus on the behind-the-scenes work of National Highways, including an incident where a wheel fell off a lorry and hit a car on the M62 near Rochdale.

The incident on the M62 between junctions 21 and 22 happened last January as a family were driving home from a shopping trip to Chester.

Traffic officers Sharon Mitchell and Tony Monaghan from the Milnrow outstation were despatched to the scene within four minutes to find the lorry on the hard shoulder and the car 500 metres ahead in the middle of the carriageway with the driver and two passengers stood behind the safety barrier.

Sharon, who has been a traffic officer for five years, said: “It was a freak accident. The family were very lucky not to have been hurt. They were obviously very shaken up by what had happened, but they did the right thing by getting behind the safety barrier.

“The car was badly damaged but driveable so I was able to put it on the hard shoulder, and we called for back-up to help remove the heavy wheel and sweep up other debris from the collision so we could reopen the road as quickly as possible.

“While it must have been a very frightening experience for them, the important thing is they walked away from it. We were glad we were able to help them by getting the lorry driver’s details for their insurance and arranging recovery to get them home.”

The incident can be seen in the first episode of series four of the popular documentary which runs for ten weeks.

Crews from production company Fearless Television spent four months filming with traffic officers, control room operators, maintenance crews, customer service teams, safety representatives and contractors across the North West and West Midlands for the show. It’s the third time the North West has featured in the programme.

National Highways staff can be seen dealing with multi-vehicle collisions, car fires, breakdowns and debris. The programme also follows maintenance crews as they carry out grass cutting and litter picking and features the team responsible for taking calls from the public in the customer contact centre.

National Highways Customer Service Director Andy Butterfield said: “With an average of four million journeys taking place on our network every day it’s safe to say our traffic officers and regional operations centre staff have assisted a phenomenal amount of customers both at the roadside and behind the scenes over the last two decades.

“Safety is our number one priority; it underpins everything we do and as custodian of England’s motorways and major A-roads, National Highways wants everyone using or working on our roads to get home reliably and safely.

“Our frontline teams play a vital role on our roads helping to make that happen and the latest series of The Motorway demonstrates perfectly how they do that, often in challenging circumstances. We hope people enjoy watching.”

The Motorway can be seen on Channel 5 at 8pm on Wednesdays from 1 May and is also available on My5.