Tragic as it was, the multi-vehicular motorway pile-up on the M5 in Somerset on Friday night was not as the media claimed the worse ever.
I should know, I was at the head of one.
It was Friday night, I was driving north on the M1. The weather was appalling, rain, wet roads, very bad spray from lorries.
As I was passing a lorry, it pulled out before I had passed, clipping the tail of my car.
I was sent into a spin across all the lanes of the motorway. I had no control, and even if I had, what could I have done?
All three lanes of traffic were driving at high speed straight at me.
The first car to hit me sent me off the motorway, across the hard shoulder and backwards down an embankment. I do not know how far down the embankment went but it looked a long way. I was caught by saplings, they slowed me down and I came to stop down the embankment with the nose of the car level with the road surface.
I got out of the car, relatively unscathed apart from a broken finger nail. I had picked up a hitch hiker and he was very badly shaken.
The police arrived, arranged for a tow truck to haul me back onto the road.
The police told me I was very very lucky to be alive. The previous week, same time Friday night, there had been a 106-car pile-up on the same stretch of motorway, many people killed.
The dumb ConDem government wish to increase the motowrway speed limit as they claim it will benefit the economy. No doubt they are correct: more crashes will do wonders for GDP!
Keithpp's Blog 