I get sent to a job “Female 14, collapse in back of police van”.  Nothing suspicious about that, we often get people collapsing when they are being arrested/evicted/give final notice/have the repossession people around.

So there they are, in the say in a side turning just off a main road.  I park up and can tell from the relaxed attitude of the police that it’s probably nothing too serious.  One look at the patient confirms this – she’ll have to go to hospital (to protect everyone against being sued), but she is fine.  I examine her vital signs and everything seems to be normal.

The ambulance turn up and I’m just handing over the information about the patient when a woman in a SUV decides to turn down the now blocked side turning.  Realising that she isn’t going to fit between ambulance and police van, she starts to reverse.

The ambulance crew, the four police officers, the patient and myself can all see what is going to happen next.

“STOP!”, shouts the policeman

“Stop!”, shouts (slightly less loud) one of the ambulance crew.

“Oh dear…”, I whisper under my breath.

*CRUNCH* goes the (slightly battered) SUV against an absolutely pristine vintage Jaguar.

“FUCK!”, goes the driver of the Jaguar, quite understandably I feel.

“You muppet”, mutters the police officer.

If you listen carefully you might hear a little snigger from someone on the ambulance side of the seven witnesses of this act of ‘Driving without due care and attention’.

Not from me…obviously.

The patient goes into the back of the ambulance, and I’m left chatting to one of the policemen.

“I bet”, I say, “She doesn’t have any insurance…”.

“Well”, he replies, “It seems that half the people around here seem to think it’s optional”. (Point 4 on the link – Although it wouldn’t surprise me to think that 50% of all car stops have no insurance).

So I have a little eavesdrop, and sure enough, she has no insurance.  The driver tries to get angry at the police, but this soon vanishes when she realises exactly how much trouble she is in.

(In the great scheme of things, not *that* much, but enough to cause her some serious anguish).

The police officer spends the next ten minutes rolling his eyes as he contemplates the paperwork he will have to do.

I try to cheer him up by telling him that he has personally successfully detected two crimes.

I don’t think it worked…