As workplaces go you can’t get much less appealing than a busy road. Dirty, noisy and dangerous, the only office atmosphere you’re likely to sample is a lungful of diesel fumes. In fact you would imagine that for the people whose work is by the road there is no upside at all — except, possibly, that it’s easy to get to.
Here the modern-day highwaymen tell their stories and, surprisingly, many remain decidedly upbeat about their lot. They say it’s not the roads that are the worst thing about the job but the people who use them.
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Gary Baldwin, accident investigator (AI), Thames Valley police
Nearly half of Gary’s 25-year police service has been spent piecing together the aftermath of serious crashes on the roads of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. His daily contact with carnage has failed to deter him from doing what he sees as interesting and rewarding work.
“You’d have to be superhuman not to be affected by what you see, but there are procedures for not getting overloaded by human suffering,” he says. “As AIs we are kept away from daily contact with casualties or relatives. If we had to do that as well as our investigation work we would probably go round the twist.
“The most satisfying results come from crashes where there have been no witnesses.
All you have in those circumstances is your own skill in piecing together the evidence in order to work out what happened.
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“In my opinion our studies and courses teach us much less than we learn from colleagues and experience. The pressure comes when you know all four lanes of the M25 are closed, waiting for you to get the evidence you need to complete an investigation.”
Bill Bradley, flower seller
The hours are long, the noise from passing traffic is horrendous and the stink from lay-by rubbish puts you off your sandwiches. But the rewards for selling flowers all day by the roadside can be significant.
Bill works his pitch on a dual carriageway near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, sitting implacably by his stall as cars and trucks thunder past within inches of his perch. “The secret of doing well is to have a really attractive display, which is often difficult when it’s windy or wet. Some days are busy, others dead. My best haul came yesterday when I sold more than £200 worth of flowers,” he says.
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A relative beginner, Bill says there are stallholders in the neighbourhood who speak of big, big money on some days in the year. This is confirmed by Richie Ayres, who runs a stall near Gerrards Cross. “The best haul I had was on Valentine’s Day this year, when I took over £2,700,” he says. “Sadly it doesn’t all go in my pocket. I run the pitch for someone else, so I get a 20% cut.”
Ayres admits it can feel like the worst job in the world on cold winter weekends. “But I haven’t missed a day here because of the weather. Sometimes people stop and ask for flowers even though they can’t pay for them. One guy offered me his watch because he was so desperate to have a bunch of roses.”
Oliver Sheerin, M25 maintenance foreman
Clearing up after crashes, replacing light bulbs, all-round winter maintenance and litter picking are just some of his responsibilities.
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On night shifts he’s responsible for both carriageways and the slip roads between the Dartford river crossing and junction 10 (the A3 interchange). It’s dangerous work: between October 2000 and February 2002 11 roadworkers were killed and more injured.
“This would be the perfect job if the public didn’t get in the way. The trouble is, drivers see only one truck cleaning a gully (the space between the two carriageways) and they wonder why we have had to close off so much of the road. Roadworks are responsible for only 10% of the nation’s congestion — honest.
“From where we stand on our side of the cones we do come in for a lot of abuse. I’ve had eggs thrown at me, cans of cola, bottles, whatever’s in the car. We’re also pretty adept at interpreting broken swearwords that trail off from passing cars. ‘You bas . . .’ is quite a popular greeting.
“My heart regularly misses a beat. Truck drivers can be bad. Some of them make a game of clipping our cones and sending them flying. I’ve been hit by one so I know they hurt. Our van was struck last night by a flying cone and you should see the dent it made.
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“We’re not just closing lanes to do repair work, though. We have to clear up spillages, too. I’ve tackled everything: diesel, glass, glue, plastic balls, beer, milk, even shrimps.
“The job certainly keeps the blood boiling. You try not to think about the colleagues who have been killed or hurt out there. We stay vigilant and hope that a few drivers will spare us a thought. After all, we want to go home when we’ve finished the shift.”
Bob Millard, assistant chief driving examiner
Nobody likes having their driving criticised. That seems to apply to students and test candidates as much as to more experienced road users. As a result, Bob finds himself dealing with the aftermath of verbal and sometimes physical abuse levelled at his examiners from candidates who have failed.
“If it happens, it’s usually once you’ve delivered the result and offered an explanation. A candidate might just explode into rage, calling me every name under the sun. It has sometimes spilt out onto the street, where they have grabbed my paperwork and torn it up.
“Mostly they calm down or walk away at this point, but occasionally the situation gets out of hand. I oversee staff at 50 centres across the southeast of England and we get six to 12 incidents of physical abuse each year.
“On one occasion an examiner was pushed over a wall by the candidate. Another young man pinned a female examiner against the wall when she told his girlfriend she didn’t have the necessary documents to take her test. A third chap just wouldn’t accept he’d failed. He was yelling at his examiner, then at me. I fetched his instructor and he yelled at her, too. Only the threat of the police stopped him.”
Craig Phelps, Severn Bridge toll collector
Irate van drivers, lost motorists who should be heading for the south coast and members of religious groups who try to pay for everyone else are just some of the clientele that Craig deals with in a shift at the toll booths. You’d be forgiven for thinking the monotonous repetition would drive him mad with boredom, but in fact it’s the bad manners that make him mad.
“We can get a lot of abuse from drivers who have been cut up by someone a mile before the bridge. By the time they get to us their anger has peaked, and they take it out on us.
“The longest queue I remember in seven years here stretched back onto the bridge — about three miles. The most likely cause would be an incident beyond the tolls, rather than us being slow. A collector should be able to put 200 vehicles an hour through the toll, and even when it’s busy there shouldn’t be more than a 20-minute wait. I don’t let it get to me when drivers lose their cool. I’m human, though, and can only take so much. Sometimes tension can be defused when members of religious groups come through and insist on paying for the car behind. That happens quite often.”
Chris Fuller, bosun on the P&O car ferry the Canterbury
Loading up to 400 cars onto a deck with no lane markings requires an unflappable personality. Chris works on a week-on, week-off roster, days or nights, travelling between Dover and Calais.
“The problem is that everyone wants to be first on but also first off, and we haven’t yet found a way of achieving this. I have become used to frustrated people driving straight at me, but luckily their nerve tends to go before mine. I am also a dab hand at resetting car alarms that have been going off throughout a crossing.
“Today we had one car towed aboard because the driver filled it up with diesel rather than petrol. I can’t do much about that, but we’ve kept him right at the back of the ship to make sure he doesn’t hold everyone else up.
“It’s reassuring to have some fairly big guys working on the car deck though, as it discourages angry truckers from taking the law into their own hands.”