On the rural roads around my home it is an unhappy fact that I often see dead animals on the road, sometimes quite large ones, in various stages of dismemberment. So as I was driving to work this morning I was not especially surprised to see the first sad signs of a life ended in the left hand lane of the motorway as it passes under the bridge at Gretna. It was early morning and still dark and I was listening to my Open University course on the car stereo as, horrifyingly, my headlights caught larger and larger body parts and an enormous amount of blood spread across the carriageway. I muttered to myself “blimey, that was a big one.”
And then I saw clothing. I felt pins and needles run from the top of my head down my body. I also thought I saw the body of a child lying face down in the hard shoulder but, in the dark and the brief, unreal moment, I could not be certain. I hope I am wrong; we see the shapes of human beings everywhere.
I reported it to the police who, to my relief, confirmed they were not aware of any incident, but would investigate. Then I waited nervously. The first indication that what I had seen was real was the large number of blue flashing lights heading in that direction, then reports that the motorway was closed following a “serious incident”. Then, with a news report of a male suicide, came certainty. Jumping from a motorway bridge into the path of traffic is a hard, cold and lonely death. I feel very, very sorry for everyone connected with this and have enormous admiration for the police who must look squarely at every aspect of an incident I only glimpsed.