This week's papers, including The Voice carry a story of how a family from Jackalas 1 village had a close shave with death at the hands of Police manning a road block. I had an almost identical experience last week.
I was joining the A1 motorway from a side road, on my way from home to town. As I approached the junction, I noticed a police road block about forty meters from the junction. I therefore was very careful to come to a complete halt at the STOP sign. Then I joined the motorway. Normally police do not stop traffic coming from that side road, but rather concentrate on the motorway traffic itself.
On this occassion, there were two cops controlling the traffic just as in the Jackalas 1 incident. The first cop, a constable was in the middle of the road, while the second, a much senior cop was about thirty meters behind the constable, and on the left of our traffic stream. The constable therefore could not see what hand signals/commands the senior cop was giving, but the senior cop had full view of what commands the constable was giving to traffic.
As I approached the constable, he waved me to pass on. But the senior cop behind him SIMULTANEOUSLY lifted his hand in a "stop" signal. Then he (senior cop) lowered his hand/arm while the constable was still waving me to pass. Something about the way the senior cop lowered his hand/arm didn't seem right. He lowered his hand in an arc, and not straight down. I decided to err on the side of caution. I deliberately disobeyed the constable's command to pass on. I stopped at the constable as he kept waving me on. He looked confused; obviously he hadn't seen what command the senior cop behind him had issued.
When he recovered, the constable made some idle remark and waved me on. I drove away and never thought anything of the incident until I read the papers and realized that by stopping against the constables's explicit orders to drive past without stopping, I may have unknowingly, averted getting myself killed!
Unlike the Jackalas 1 family, I was not shot at. But who knows what could have happened if I had obeyed the constable and driven past, just as the Jackalas 1 family did? What also made it so risky was the fact that had I driven past the constable, there would have been no reason to stop at the senior cop because he had lowered his hand BEFORE I REACHED THE CONSTABLE, and while the constable was still waving me NOT to stop!
Phew! on "hindsight", I think that I am lucky to be alive.
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