The moment a lorry toppled over due to high winds and crushed the front of a police car has been captured on dashcam.
The bonnet and windscreen of the patrol car was damaged during the incident on the A1 between Haddington and Dunbar at 10.15am on Tuesday.
The static police car was “carrying out scene protection” after another lorry had toppled over between the two carriageways.
Footage of the incident was posted on Twitter by Chief Superintendent Stewart Carle, head of the road policing unit. The driver, Sergeant John Easton, walked away from the incident unscathed.
He said: “When I got to the scene, I jumped out the car, went across to check on the driver from the first lorry to make sure that he was ok, and he was already in another vehicle with one of our support drivers, so I said to them they needed to get off the bridge as it was too dangerous.
Policeman requests road closure as ‘lorry has just toppled on to my patrol car’
“As I struggled trying to get back to my car I had to hold onto the lorry to try and pull myself around.
“I had to get back into my car to then contact our control room and Traffic Scotland to close the bridge and the road.”
Mr Carle added: “That’s at which point as I was speaking on the radio that the lorry started to fall over onto my car. As it happens, my favourite car in the RPU fleet.
Here’s the aforementioned video
— Pedro RPU (@PedroRpu) December 10, 2019
“I took a deep breath, got out, and checked that the driver of the lorry that had hit my vehicle was ok before radioing for more assistance. Colleagues quickly arrived to help at the scene and we closed the road at the bridge.
“It could have been much worse but fortunately I walked away unscathed. I certainly won’t forget why it’s called the ‘Windy Bridge’ now.”
It was the second incident recorded of lorries toppling over on the road due to severe weather on Tuesday.
Two other HGVs were travelling along the A1 and toppled over between Innerwick and Skateraw in East Lothian at around 7.45am, leaving the road blocked in both directions.
Again there were no reports of any injuries.
