The tyres in those days were terrible as well, but still they managed to "mostly" get through snowball earth ... Drivers nowadays, one snowflake and the whole of the England is gridlocked.
Always have a soft spot for a Range Rover classic and P38 as from 90 to 05.i was responsible for tooling approval and dimensional Engineer reports of the Landrover Aluminium V8 block and head and the TD5 head but not block that along with the V8 the 5 cylinder diesel went in the P38 Rangey.
I remember watching this when it was first aired and it was a real insight how the motorway police worked (next to no omnipresent documentary crews with small cameras in those days) Funnily enough I wasn’t in the slightest bit ‘triggered’ of in need of a ‘safe space’ after viewing.
Best film I’ve seen is this, it’s so atmospheric it just seemed a different time back then. How different things are now, with all the health & safety rules, these guys just rolled up their sleeves and got on with the job. Savage winters back tgen.
Ah yes, the good old days of drink/driving and significantly more deaths on the roads than now. Police have a significantly more difficult job these days thanks to funding cuts. 74 GMB officers dedicated to the motorways of the city in 1979. That'll be 8 now.
And he wasn't given a ticket for stopping to help either. All that man would get today would be a Politically correct Bo11ocking. A sodding great fine. And told to F### off, mind your own business, and stop interferring.
they were speaking dutch not german but still pretty amazing considering people who speak english as a first language are not exactly famous for being able to speak anything else i'd imagine that guy knowing both languages and being there at the right time was pretty one in a million odds.
Fantastic. Not that long ago but a different time. Those officers wouldnt last now, they use initiative, common sense and talk straight. No place for that now.
Pal of mine got pulled over in Blackley, Manchester, early ‘80’s. He stumbles out of his van, well sloshed. The copper looks at his licence and realises it’s my mate’s 21st birthday. He only gives him an escort home, tells him to sleep it off and learn his lesson. Which he did.
@@flalingbashers2957 This comment has been reported for the use of vile language. If you are going to react to my reply please find the decency to use a more educated and meaningful response. I am tired of replying to nothing but common imbeciles who lack the intelligence to come up with something more original.
I live within spitting distance of the M25 Dartford Crossing. If there's even a minor prang on the motorway the whole damn area gets gridlocked within 30 minutes. Oh how great it would be to have a couple of coppers with their Range Rover who could move two slightly dented motors to the hard shoulder within 10 minutes instead of the current 3 hours for Highways England to do so.
What Bloody Hard Shoulder ? The Hard shoulder was always planned as an emergency refuge. Turning them into Running Lanes has removed that planned place of safety.
Apart from the cars being as solid as a bean can, look how much better it was then, coppers not afraid to call a member of the public an idiot when they were, even the public were more civil and approachable and had Respect for the coppers...... just shows how backward we are now , the irony,,,,, thanks that was a good watch
I was on the 62 driving my Morris Minor van from Liverpool to Hull,I remember this day vividly.They actually closed the motorway 10 minutes after I got off it.I was a mere 20 year old,I knew no different.
I was actually on it, right on the top when they closed it, I was on the westbound side just before the Scammonden bridge crosses over. The scariest thing for me was when an Artic was on my offside, he was trying to move forward and the back end of his (empty) trailer started to slide to the left, the wind was that strong. I had visions of being stuck under his deck and squashed. The surface was just a sheet of Ice. At one point I got out of the car and the wind knocked me clean off my feet. It was bloody cold and, it was genuinely scary.
I felt sorry for the poor boggers needing medical assistance and what they must have felt when they saw the ambulance approaching them at 39:38! That whole sequence was brilliantly calamitous.
Ambulances then were basically just buses to the hospital for a lot of injuries. They had very basic equipement and little expertise in treating the seriously injured.
@@Gecko.... They were mini hospitals compared to the ambulances of 30 years before (of which I coincidently have an interest in!), but yes they were essentially vessels for hospital transport. I was just remarking on the calamity of the driving!
Watched this a few times over the years. Absolutely encapsulates that era of our roads, traffic policing & adverse weather. 2 things.... my interest lies with this programme as I am a traffic cop and have been for over 20 years and regularly patrol the motorways and this programmes shows the DNA that runs through the work of us traffic cops and the dangers ( and the fun) we still face day to day. Some of the working practices captured in this film are still embroidered in today’s practices even though cars equipment and trainings moved up. Motorways still very dangerous places & a dangerous occupation. Secondly, some may not believe this , but watching this programme at around 27mins...the incident with the gentleman who’s crashed his beloved red Ford Cortina...that is a chap who was our neighbour when I was growing up as kid!... He is called Mr Yates, from Haslingden. Still with us & I still chat with him now & again. Ironically he once told me he worked as a civil engineer on constructing the motorways. Quite remarkable.
Just watched that bit on Mr.Yates,speaks a bit like Fred Diana and looks a touch like Robert Lindsay.The Bobby who was dealing needs to lose a stone or two lol
@@tba8241 He does sound a lot like Fred Dibnah, I noticed that too. I also thought the police Range Rover was going to plough into the stricken Cortina!
Today’s police could learn such a lot from this, common seance instead of bloody procedure, they got stuck in and got results with a sense of humour, it was the year I passed my HGV and can never remember the road closures we get today in this Nanny state, the police earned there respect those days and got a lot more back from the public in return, thank you so much for this video
You have to say that those copper, ambulance men, and firefighters were proper heroes. Even the motorists that were injured just took it in their stride.
Brilliant video, i was a hgv driver when this film was made and i can remember the m62 being closed due to the ice and snow .When they managed to reopen the motorway there was thick patches of ice on the road .I was trying to get to Sheffield but they had closed the m62 so i tryed the woodhead road instead, i managed to get about half way when i got stopped and told that road was blocked so i managed to turn back and drove to Sheffield the next day. When you watch what the police were doing then ,they did a great job . But we should be very grateful about the way accidents are dealt with now . Rolling road blocks and stopped traffic while the incidents are dealt with. Thankfully we don't have much snow now.
A brilliant video, and a reminder of how it really was grim up north in the 70's. Tremendous respect for those policemen, risking their lives for others and not making any fuss about it, and a bit of nostalgia as well, for the times long lost when people could use common sense and initiative to achieve results.
I agree, there seems to be way too much aggression and confrontation these days which is sad. Having lived and worked then though, I am so very glad our attitudes to personal safety have improved since then -- I saw injury and death in the workplace because of poor attitudes to safety.
This is great back when bobbies were bobbies I.e No speed cameras no ANPR cameras no HATOs. I’m sure safety has improved since then with all the new laws and rules but there is something satisfying about problem solving with whatever is at hand.
Atrotious dangerously cold weather. It was the same in NL , west-Germany, DDR and Denmark. I remember it clearly. Our Dutch highway police also used Range Rovers back then. Nice video!
Fantastic piece of archive footage. The only things that haven't changed in 40 odd years are the harsh winter weather conditions over the tops and idiots in motor vehicles.
Excellent film. My late father was a Police Constable in Hattersley just slightly further south of the M62 and often described how bad the Pennine road conditions were and how motorists would still try and cross. How things have changed but to think there were no air bags, anti-lock brakes and only Landrovers/Rangerovers had 4 wheel drive. But yet some were determined to 'get to work'.
Makes you realise how good the police were back then, look at them, hands on, stuck into anything, tow rope on the Range Rover, climbing on the barriers to clear snow, don't see that now, can't see a BMW X5 doing what the Range Rovers did either. They just seemed to get on with it, this should be necessary viewing for all trainee traffic police.
Yeah now the cops are right in figuring what kind of revenue there gonna make up and get out of you, no deescalate, they escalate to get you for nothing there, then they call the wreckers and sit down and tally up the revenue they gotout of poeple, no more serve and protect, its harass and collect
looked to me like they really ran those range rovers into the ground doing what they did with em back in them days, don't reckon them Rovers made it past 10 years of hard graft.
I was a traffic officer in the 1990 for 10 years before I became a detective. Our top priority was to look after the injured , investigate and to remove obstructions . We just dragged things out of the way with Range Rovers and tow ropes. This was to keep traffic moving. Nowadays you see the Highways officer sitting behind broken cars waiting for tow trucks that are stuck in the traffic jams. Ged
As an 8 year old when this was filmed the snow was great, schools were shut and we used to break the icicles off houses with snowballs, no loft insulation back then. Driving in this must have been hell. Those coppers were typical 70's blokes, roll your sleeves and crack on, unlike today sadly......risk assessment anyone!!
@@southwest3671 It goes a lot deeper than that. Social media has ruined people's attention spans (that along with other on-demand content sites). People are more entitled, thin-skinned, and not grounded in reality, among other issues. We're in a period of cultural decay because an era of decadence (peacetime and abundance of everything we could possibly need and more) created large swathes of weak men. Inevitably, things are crumbling around us and many people have the stupidity to think we are moving forwards because they saw something scientific that looked cool on some viral RUclips video. Lots of people are choosing long careers in pointless fields instead of starting families causing our below-replacement birth rate and a lack of fulfillment in young people - they try to fill the void with hedonism and fake spirituality (think 20-something women taking up astrology and a laughably watered-down version of Buddhism where their "meditation" is interrupted every 20 seconds because they keep getting Snapchat notifications). The police covered up massive grooming gang scandals all around the country for decades because they were too scared of being labeled as racist - so they let 10,000s of native British girls suffer repeatedly because they didn't want to be accused of something (and then, for the most part, got away with it and had their records thoroughly scrubbed from existence). I've seen young people who champion astroturfed movements such as Extinction Rebellion and claim to care deeply about the environment, but will then waste away their days smoking weed, littering in public, and being a general drain on society as a whole. The West in general is falling apart, so the next half-century will be an interesting one, to say the least - things can change a lot in just a couple decades. I'm sure that will seem like a melodramatic conclusion to most people, but once you see how rotten the foundations of our society have become, you too will realize it's only a matter of time before various parts of it start collapsing.
@@milesfinch It's more down to better understanding of mechanism of injury and traumatic injuries, plus the fact that vehicles are a fair bit quicker these days... There weren't many vehicles on the road back then that could break 100mph, now pretty much everything, even your gran's motorised shopping trolley, can. People crash faster and harder these days...
@@gosportjamie yes but cars back then had no real safety I crashed a e rev fiat panda at 10mph complete write off bet cops went to some horrific crashes then
Just realized how old I am! I can't believe I was driving a ford D series then. I now drive a very modern Scania and unfortunately at lot of them accidents still happen today ! I retire in a few years 😅
Remember watching this when it was first made on TV; brilliant documentary, vividly filmed, immaculately edited, full of danger and humour, the latter needed in such awful weather. Glad I found it again after all these years.
Whenever I watch things like this, I always imagine going back in time and telling them all about what things are like in the future and how much has changed. They’d look at me like I was an alien 😂
What has happened to this country in the name of politics, bureaucracy and progression is heart breaking! Real people facing real life using common sense, nous and whats at hand! not one fucking mobile device.....breath of fresh air.....sweet motors too!
Oh turn it in will you. I suggest you spend a couple if days with the motorway cops of now in wintertime on the same stretch of motorway. I think you'll find that nothing much has changed for these poor souls who have to police these horrid stretches of the M62 in winter.
This is like opening up a motoring time capsule of pure Gold. Absolutely AMAZING footage of bygone times from my early childhood. Great upload. Thank you, this was a pure pleasure to watch. !
When coppers were proper coppers and used common sense, and nobody wanted to sue them for sneezing. I used that stretch every day for 11 years and, the night it was closed by heavy snow on the top I was stuck on it for hours. Some of the scenes they cleared in minutes would have the motorway shut in both directions for three days now. They need a full shift to do the risk assessment before they can get out of the car. As for the mighty Range Rover or the Defender, what a sorry state JLR has become. Today it's nothing but a footballers wifes posh handbag carrier. JLR should be made to study this film to make them realise how they've Destroyed the best 4x4 there ever was.
Remember back in those days the ambulances weren't the paramedic units we have today, they were basically just to transport you to the hospital and most ambulance workers were employed by the council.
@@michaelgrace1298 One of my schoolmates got run down by a van. The two policemen who attended put him in the back of their panda car and drove him to the local A&E: no first aid, no checks for broken bones, no nothing.
Any vehicle with a first aid kit can be called an ambulance. I think ambulances of this era had oxygen and and a ventilator and that's about it. I think trauma doctors would go out on certain jobs but that was on London only I think.
I started my driving career in 1980 driving vans & then HGVs until 2016, the M62 was a regular run until 2008 when I went local only (Bristol to Wales). Great police in those days 'up north' & one incident springs to mind. Driving vans for a printing company in Bristol my boss informed me in 1984 that he was buying me a brand new VW LT35 6 cylinder diesel van, these were fast!! Driving over the M62 & reaching the top of a hill in the 3rd lane & starting a downhill run passing 2 lanes of now accelerating trucks I looked at my speedo to see I was doing 80mph & still accelerating, as I passed the trucks & pulled in to the inside lane I noticed a police Range Rover following me. He stayed behind as I pulled into the services & stopped beside me, as the driver walked over to me I was expecting a speeding ticket...no... his words stay with me still....." Is that one of those new 6 cylinder turbo diesels?" I said yes & turning to his mate he says " I knew it was the moment he hit 90mph, I told you they were quick!" turning to me he said "Just hold the right foot back a bit driver, I know you were passing the trucks but it only takes a second to lose control" & off they drove....& no ticket!
1979, I was fifteen and living with my mum and dad in south east London. Life back then seems a million miles away from the politically correct, health and safety driven times we live in now. Back then they just cleared the road and caused as little delay as possible. Nowadays they cordon off the M25 for six hours if a leaf blows across the carriageway.
CARA, ESSES PATRULHEIROS DE TRÂNSITO DE RODOVIAS INGLESAS TRABALHAVAM, E MUITO, ISSO, EM 1979, QUE DEMAIS!! PERCEBE SE O AMOR E DEDICAÇÃO DELES EM SALVAR VIDAS, PARABÉNS!! COM TODA A CERTEZA, ALGUNS JÁ SE FORAM, E OS QUE AINDA ESTÃO ENTRE NÓS, DEVEM TER ENTRE 70 E 80 ANOS, OU MAIS. ADOREI, AMEI ESSE EXCELENTE E MARAVILHOSO VÍDEO!!
OK, now I have watched all of it = just about one of the very best things ever filmed and certainly the greatest must-see on RUclips (as there's mostly crap otherwise on offer ; but try Second Side Up!).
Quality film when coppers where coppers. Its like it was a competition to keep it open. When the ambulance hit the police car and the copper said well we didnt need that car.
July 2024. Hats off to those hardcore police men of the 70s They really did their jobs properly and risk them too. I was only a 10 year old back then and remembered those long sideburns, dustbin jacket wearing hard men of the 70s. Just like those actors in the sweeneys. I really really wished that I could relive that era of time in the UK. Very special times back them
1979 when every copper seemed to be a moustacheio man 🥸🥸🥸😂😂. Playing chicken on the motorway removing debris 😂. That was so normal back then, how things have changed. Great vid.
My goodness what a winter that was I remember it well, it actually started in 1978 and over flowed eventually into 1979 I was on the M62 three times a week getting on at Howden and doing delivers in West Yorkshire and on Mondays down to Manchester Airport.Everyone talks about the beast from the East compared to 78/79 in my mind it was a snow flurry, as winter's go, we are on the East Coast and it wasn't that bad but of course some places were effected more than others.
From the days before the police dressed in para military kit merely to make themselves look tough but actually were tough and realised the public didn’t need to be told everything is a danger! I love all the old cars too!
That was brilliant! I can’t believe how hands on the cops were. They wouldn’t bother with half of that nowadays. They’re leaving it to the ambulance crews, and recovery trucks.
I drive the M62 almost every day, fascinating documentary and even now the uppermost stretch is wild and remote. As someone who has to travel between Yorkshire and Cheshire for work, this road is a lifeline, especially in the winter.
You poor guy. No amount of money woukd make me drive thus journey to work everyday. I'd rather work in Morrisons in Bradford on £8 an hour than go through that everyday.
I drove from Shaw (Oldham) to Leeds commuting. Never seen the weather as bad as this but have known it to snow. It's a great road apart from the horrible traffic!
Great cars in this, not like all the hard-drive crap today. Lots of MkIV Cortinas, now the most endangered of all Cortinas. Funny seeing that ambulance crash into that police car at 39:52, though wouldn't have reassured casulties needing to go to hospital. Although 10 do remember the winter of 1979. It was a very bad one but brilliant for sledging.
WOW 4 weeks after this my mom gave birth to me 2nd April 1979. It just seems mad to watch this program that was on only weeks before I was born. Then to here the guy on here say just cause someone's got a new £5000car with disc brakes. He thinks he can stop on a 2 penny peace. N he just can't lol.
Fogger. The way they ducked between traffic to clear road. Bloody wonderful how they just got on with the task at hand. No waiting for Highway Agency etc to say its gonna take hours to clear!
yonmons Thank you for posting this, I remember well seeing this. Watching with my Father as a 14 year old. He was a wagon driver, I do miss him and wish I could share this with him. I am in awe at GMP and had friends who worked in traffic. Respect.
Biblical weather, mischievous horses and crap drivers are no match for blunt northern coppers with epic facial hair and the mighty Range Rover. 👌👌👌
Probably why it took so long to catch the Yorkshire ripper, must have been the look of the day for truck drivers.
... and not the name of a short drink!
It's Yorkshire tea now..
The tyres in those days were terrible as well, but still they managed to "mostly" get through snowball earth ...
Drivers nowadays, one snowflake and the whole of the England is gridlocked.
did they have snow in the bible?
Brilliant stuff. Not one copper shouting "I need you to calm down" when everyone is perfectly calm.
Old school coppers can’t beat them and never will hats off to you guys
@@JD-eq4dplike what?
@@JD-eq4dp They were police officers during the height of Organised crime and the IRA Troubles. They dealt with the same shit, with less equipment.
Back in the days when men were men and range rovers were range rovers, cant we turn the clock back and go back to normality, brilliant
Agree
When we built roads
When we knew how to deal with fucking NIMBYS
These boomers stopping progress
Your now in the day where men can be women and women can be men 😂
Range rovers are actually the same today as they were then. Junk.
Always have a soft spot for a Range Rover classic and P38 as from 90 to 05.i was responsible for tooling approval and dimensional Engineer reports of the Landrover Aluminium V8 block and head and the TD5 head but not block that along with the V8 the 5 cylinder diesel went in the P38 Rangey.
I remember watching this when it was first aired and it was a real insight how the motorway police worked (next to no omnipresent documentary crews with small cameras in those days)
Funnily enough I wasn’t in the slightest bit ‘triggered’ of in need of a ‘safe space’ after viewing.
I was six when this first aired. And yes I had the Corgi Police Range Rover model. What a brilliant piece of nostalgia.
That is soo cool,I had the ambulance model,begged mum long time till she bought it.
I was 6 aswell 😊
Pulling a jack knifed wagon with two range rovers in the snow,,,class. Jamie davis would need 3. Wreckers for that lol.
🤣🤣
Best film I’ve seen is this, it’s so atmospheric it just seemed a different time back then.
How different things are now, with all the health & safety rules, these guys just rolled up their sleeves and got on with the job.
Savage winters back tgen.
Agreed
Ah yes, the good old days of drink/driving and significantly more deaths on the roads than now. Police have a significantly more difficult job these days thanks to funding cuts. 74 GMB officers dedicated to the motorways of the city in 1979. That'll be 8 now.
Me aswell.
@@StuartOliver83 Seconded
Well, the reason we have H&S so pedantic is because back in the day people were f*cking idiots who clearly didn't have common sense
That's a superb bit of telly.
love the Yorkshie man fluent in German...cant stop watching this. its my childhood..its everything I love
And he wasn't given a ticket for stopping to help either.
All that man would get today would be a Politically correct Bo11ocking.
A sodding great fine.
And told to F### off, mind your own business, and stop interferring.
He probably learnt it in the war.
they were speaking dutch not german but still pretty amazing considering people who speak english as a first language are not exactly famous for being able to speak anything else i'd imagine that guy knowing both languages and being there at the right time was pretty one in a million odds.
@@NoirL.A. Even I'm late... the driver speaks Swiss-German.
This is pure social history and absolutely fascinating :)
Fantastic. Not that long ago but a different time. Those officers wouldnt last now, they use initiative, common sense and talk straight.
No place for that now.
Pal of mine got pulled over in Blackley, Manchester, early ‘80’s. He stumbles out of his van, well sloshed. The copper looks at his licence and realises it’s my mate’s 21st birthday. He only gives him an escort home, tells him to sleep it off and learn his lesson. Which he did.
08.38 Brian Mitchell RIP, not long after this he was posted to Salford and was one of my first Sgts, top bloke
Good riddance.
@@swaneknoctic9555 Prick
A
@ swane knoctic. You are a collosal bell end!
@@flalingbashers2957 This comment has been reported for the use of vile language. If you are going to react to my reply please find the decency to use a more educated and meaningful response. I am tired of replying to nothing but common imbeciles who lack the intelligence to come up with something more original.
@@swaneknoctic9555 here is a response go and fuck off u dirty gobshite
I live within spitting distance of the M25 Dartford Crossing. If there's even a minor prang on the motorway the whole damn area gets gridlocked within 30 minutes. Oh how great it would be to have a couple of coppers with their Range Rover who could move two slightly dented motors to the hard shoulder within 10 minutes instead of the current 3 hours for Highways England to do so.
What Bloody Hard Shoulder ?
The Hard shoulder was always planned as an emergency refuge.
Turning them into Running Lanes has removed that planned place of safety.
@@philyew3617 I feel your pain. I know, it's wishful thinking on my part to expect common sense solutions these days.
Apart from the cars being as solid as a bean can, look how much better it was then, coppers not afraid to call a member of the public an idiot when they were, even the public were more civil and approachable and had Respect for the coppers...... just shows how backward we are now , the irony,,,,, thanks that was a good watch
Well put! Completely agree
You mean when they could do what they wanted? Arseholes the lot of em..👎
@@Roscoe.P.Coldchain in your opinion.. no need for obscenities
Best thing I’ve watched for ages. My dad was a firefighter from 1978 to 2008, great to see the yellow leggings again!
Believe me, it wasn't nice wearing them.
@@bobbelsekwol i bet mate
My dad was a firefighter from 1975 to 2006 with greater Manchester fire and rescue service
I was on the 62 driving my Morris Minor van from Liverpool to Hull,I remember this day vividly.They actually closed the motorway 10 minutes after I got off it.I was a mere 20 year old,I knew no different.
You were on it weren’t you dark blue Morris van!
I was actually on it, right on the top when they closed it, I was on the westbound side just before the Scammonden bridge crosses over. The scariest thing for me was when an Artic was on my offside, he was trying to move forward and the back end of his (empty) trailer started to slide to the left, the wind was that strong. I had visions of being stuck under his deck and squashed. The surface was just a sheet of Ice. At one point I got out of the car and the wind knocked me clean off my feet.
It was bloody cold and, it was genuinely scary.
41:50 "Can you check the lady trapped in the back?"
"No problem." [kicks in window] "How are ya, luv?"
"Smashin pet,and you?"😄
I felt sorry for the poor boggers needing medical assistance and what they must have felt when they saw the ambulance approaching them at 39:38! That whole sequence was brilliantly calamitous.
"We didn't want that car" XD
Proof that life is comedy!
I couldn’t help but laugh. Here comes back up. No no they’ve F@&£ed it.
Ambulances then were basically just buses to the hospital for a lot of injuries. They had very basic equipement and little expertise in treating the seriously injured.
@@Gecko.... They were mini hospitals compared to the ambulances of 30 years before (of which I coincidently have an interest in!), but yes they were essentially vessels for hospital transport. I was just remarking on the calamity of the driving!
Watched this a few times over the years. Absolutely encapsulates that era of our roads, traffic policing & adverse weather.
2 things.... my interest lies with this programme as I am a traffic cop and have been for over 20 years and regularly patrol the motorways and this programmes shows the DNA that runs through the work of us traffic cops and the dangers ( and the fun) we still face day to day. Some of the working practices captured in this film are still embroidered in today’s practices even though cars equipment and trainings moved up. Motorways still very dangerous places & a dangerous occupation.
Secondly, some may not believe this , but watching this programme at around 27mins...the incident with the gentleman who’s crashed his beloved red Ford Cortina...that is a chap who was our neighbour when I was growing up as kid!... He is called Mr Yates, from Haslingden. Still with us & I still chat with him now & again. Ironically he once told me he worked as a civil engineer on constructing the motorways.
Quite remarkable.
Just watched that bit on Mr.Yates,speaks a bit like Fred Diana and looks a touch like Robert Lindsay.The Bobby who was dealing needs to lose a stone or two lol
I’d say we’ve regressed, not progressed as a society since this film. Such a sorry state of affairs now.
@@tba8241 He does sound a lot like Fred Dibnah, I noticed that too. I also thought the police Range Rover was going to plough into the stricken Cortina!
Thanks for posting, think this is my 3rd or 4th watching of this and i'll keep an eye out for Mr Yates shortly 👍🙂
you start appreciating traffic cops when your children 'get their licence'...had a traffic cop in the family too
Hour long Range Rover advert!
Brilliant!
The mighty V8 Range Rovers, pity the motorway units dont use them any more
Considering everything I hear about current Jaguar Land Rover vehicles it's a good job!
We used to have V8 diesel Range Rovers on CMPG. They were not reliable.
Lovely stuff. I was 8 when this was filmed. The cars, the audio values, the snow, skating rozzers....what a brilliant video!
Today’s police could learn such a lot from this, common seance instead of bloody procedure, they got stuck in and got results with a sense of humour, it was the year I passed my HGV and can never remember the road closures we get today in this Nanny state, the police earned there respect those days and got a lot more back from the public in return, thank you so much for this video
Doesn’t help when they employ mere foetuses with no common sense or life experience.
A Marina on Cobra Super Slots...
You don't get much more late '70s British than that...
If this film is anything to go by, they were all Marinas and cortinas back then
@@mickw7360 They were both very big sellers to company fleets back then...
You have to say that those copper, ambulance men, and firefighters were proper heroes. Even the motorists that were injured just took it in their stride.
I particularly enjoyed the ambulance driver crashing into the parked police car on the motorway at 37:39.
39:40
@@rjs198585 Yeah. but "we didn't want that car"
What a fantastic piece of automotive history. Thanks for sharing.
A reminder that back in the day the Range Rover was the best car in the world.
Now,the worst
When it hadn’t broken down of course. 😊
These series one Range Rover cars were EPIC.
100% Agree
That wasn't what I expected from this film. Absolute bedlam from start to finish!
The quickest 50-odd minutes I've spent on RUclips.
Brilliant video, i was a hgv driver when this film was made and i can remember the m62 being closed due to the ice and snow .When they managed to reopen the motorway there was thick patches of ice on the road .I was trying to get to Sheffield but they had closed the m62 so i tryed the woodhead road instead, i managed to get about half way when i got stopped and told that road was blocked so i managed to turn back and drove to Sheffield the next day. When you watch what the police were doing then ,they did a great job . But we should be very grateful about the way accidents are dealt with now . Rolling road blocks and stopped traffic while the incidents are dealt with. Thankfully we don't have much snow now.
A brilliant video, and a reminder of how it really was grim up north in the 70's. Tremendous respect for those policemen, risking their lives for others and not making any fuss about it, and a bit of nostalgia as well, for the times long lost when people could use common sense and initiative to achieve results.
I'll smoke to that, a thankless job we would all miss if they weren't there!
grim up north lol, no, it`s just you shandy drinking southerners cant hack the cold.
Always respect a man with sideburns 🧔
And a thick mustache.
People just got on with things better. The copper asks a question, gets an answer and your alright. Nowadays everyone just gives em lip
I agree, there seems to be way too much aggression and confrontation these days which is sad. Having lived and worked then though, I am so very glad our attitudes to personal safety have improved since then -- I saw injury and death in the workplace because of poor attitudes to safety.
And we all carried licence and insurane
2 Range Rovers pulling the jack knifed trailer is epic,the beauty of full time 4 wheel drive.
This is great back when bobbies were bobbies I.e No speed cameras no ANPR cameras no HATOs. I’m sure safety has improved since then with all the new laws and rules but there is something satisfying about problem solving with whatever is at hand.
DangerousDavies2008 surprised to see Hi vis
M62. The Motorway That Would Never Close, unless it snowed
Atrotious dangerously cold weather. It was the same in NL , west-Germany, DDR and Denmark.
I remember it clearly. Our Dutch highway police also used Range Rovers back then.
Nice video!
Fantastic piece of archive footage. The only things that haven't changed in 40 odd years are the harsh winter weather conditions over the tops and idiots in motor vehicles.
Them were the days - 2 x v8 range rovers tying to yank an jackknifed artic ....meanwhile an a balance bins it into plods best motor
Excellent film. My late father was a Police Constable in Hattersley just slightly further south of the M62 and often described how bad the Pennine road conditions were and how motorists would still try and cross. How things have changed but to think there were no air bags, anti-lock brakes and only Landrovers/Rangerovers had 4 wheel drive. But yet some were determined to 'get to work'.
This is like watching traffic cops 40 years too early 🤣. This is the year I was born, and my things have changed loads and not for the best.
I know what you mean
T’raffic Cops
Excellent film, proper weather, proper coppers!
Makes you realise how good the police were back then, look at them, hands on, stuck into anything, tow rope on the Range Rover, climbing on the barriers to clear snow, don't see that now, can't see a BMW X5 doing what the Range Rovers did either. They just seemed to get on with it, this should be necessary viewing for all trainee traffic police.
Yep, and even rescued a guy’s umbrella!
Yeah now the cops are right in figuring what kind of revenue there gonna make up and get out of you, no deescalate, they escalate to get you for nothing there, then they call the wreckers and sit down and tally up the revenue they gotout of poeple, no more serve and protect, its harass and collect
looked to me like they really ran those range rovers into the ground doing what they did with em back in them days, don't reckon them Rovers made it past 10 years of hard graft.
I was a traffic officer in the 1990 for 10 years before I became a detective. Our top priority was to look after the injured , investigate and to remove obstructions . We just dragged things out of the way with Range Rovers and tow ropes. This was to keep traffic moving. Nowadays you see the Highways officer sitting behind broken cars waiting for tow trucks that are stuck in the traffic jams. Ged
We drag/push broken down vehicles onto the hard shoulder every day, off busier motorways than we had in the 70s
As an 8 year old when this was filmed the snow was great, schools were shut and we used to break the icicles off houses with snowballs, no loft insulation back then. Driving in this must have been hell. Those coppers were typical 70's blokes, roll your sleeves and crack on, unlike today sadly......risk assessment anyone!!
Jeezus! Biblical weather! What legends! If one rangy won’t tow it, use two.
The coppers were a different breed back then
So was the public in general. Much more grounded and with common sense.
This was before I was born nice to see the old emergency vehicles and police working as a team not like today
@@southwest3671 i have to agree with you, everybody has changed, police, general public, just society altogether, in such a short time really.
@@paulreed480
Thanks to the invention of (anti) social media. As thumbs went up, moods came down.
@@southwest3671 It goes a lot deeper than that. Social media has ruined people's attention spans (that along with other on-demand content sites). People are more entitled, thin-skinned, and not grounded in reality, among other issues. We're in a period of cultural decay because an era of decadence (peacetime and abundance of everything we could possibly need and more) created large swathes of weak men. Inevitably, things are crumbling around us and many people have the stupidity to think we are moving forwards because they saw something scientific that looked cool on some viral RUclips video. Lots of people are choosing long careers in pointless fields instead of starting families causing our below-replacement birth rate and a lack of fulfillment in young people - they try to fill the void with hedonism and fake spirituality (think 20-something women taking up astrology and a laughably watered-down version of Buddhism where their "meditation" is interrupted every 20 seconds because they keep getting Snapchat notifications). The police covered up massive grooming gang scandals all around the country for decades because they were too scared of being labeled as racist - so they let 10,000s of native British girls suffer repeatedly because they didn't want to be accused of something (and then, for the most part, got away with it and had their records thoroughly scrubbed from existence). I've seen young people who champion astroturfed movements such as Extinction Rebellion and claim to care deeply about the environment, but will then waste away their days smoking weed, littering in public, and being a general drain on society as a whole. The West in general is falling apart, so the next half-century will be an interesting one, to say the least - things can change a lot in just a couple decades. I'm sure that will seem like a melodramatic conclusion to most people, but once you see how rotten the foundations of our society have become, you too will realize it's only a matter of time before various parts of it start collapsing.
No pissing about in those day's. Crash , clear and carry on .
POB. 🎓
Yep , health and safety has gone nuts these day, no sense.
@@damian-795 Too many enthusiastic coopers causing life changing injuries me thinks!!
@@milesfinch It's more down to better understanding of mechanism of injury and traumatic injuries, plus the fact that vehicles are a fair bit quicker these days...
There weren't many vehicles on the road back then that could break 100mph, now pretty much everything, even your gran's motorised shopping trolley, can. People crash faster and harder these days...
@@gosportjamie yes but cars back then had no real safety I crashed a e rev fiat panda at 10mph complete write off bet cops went to some horrific crashes then
I remember this winter well I was eight great time to be a kid in the snow it was a bad one .🥶
We were a bloody sight tougher in those days!
Just realized how old I am! I can't believe I was driving a ford D series then. I now drive a very modern Scania and unfortunately at lot of them accidents still happen today ! I retire in a few years 😅
Dragging broken down vehicles out of the way with range rovers and rope - a long gone practice
Remember watching this when it was first made on TV; brilliant documentary, vividly filmed, immaculately edited, full of danger and humour, the latter needed in such awful weather. Glad I found it again after all these years.
Whenever I watch things like this, I always imagine going back in time and telling them all about what things are like in the future and how much has changed. They’d look at me like I was an alien 😂
What has happened to this country in the name of politics, bureaucracy and progression is heart breaking! Real people facing real life using common sense, nous and whats at hand! not one fucking mobile device.....breath of fresh air.....sweet motors too!
A radio is a mobile device
Oh turn it in will you. I suggest you spend a couple if days with the motorway cops of now in wintertime on the same stretch of motorway. I think you'll find that nothing much has changed for these poor souls who have to police these horrid stretches of the M62 in winter.
This is like opening up a motoring time capsule of pure Gold. Absolutely AMAZING footage of bygone times from my early childhood. Great upload. Thank you, this was a pure pleasure to watch. !
When coppers were proper coppers and used common sense, and nobody wanted to sue them for sneezing. I used that stretch every day for 11 years and, the night it was closed by heavy snow on the top I was stuck on it for hours. Some of the scenes they cleared in minutes would have the motorway shut in both directions for three days now. They need a full shift to do the risk assessment before they can get out of the car. As for the mighty Range Rover or the Defender, what a sorry state JLR has become. Today it's nothing but a footballers wifes posh handbag carrier. JLR should be made to study this film to make them realise how they've Destroyed the best 4x4 there ever was.
I actuall worked the M62 up until 1979 with all these Officers, many have sadly passed away, but it was a hectic Motorway, but great camararderie
Good old school police that just got the job done
respect for the policemen and ambulance crew!!!
Proper documentary from when great TV was made. Hat off to the coppers involved.
GREAT VIDEO Thanks for posting .I'd love to see an X5 do what those Range Rovers did .
51.10 those real police guys sliding down motorway on the ice,,using their sense of humour, classic,,,🇬🇧👍
But also a serious demonstration...if they slid that far in their shoes, how far would those cars have slid trying to brake at speed!
Remember back in those days the ambulances weren't the paramedic units we have today, they were basically just to transport you to the hospital and most ambulance workers were employed by the council.
Paul Simpson when did that change
@@s125ish it's got to be around this time, I've see videos of mobile doctors not long after this
@@michaelgrace1298 One of my schoolmates got run down by a van. The two policemen who attended put him in the back of their panda car and drove him to the local A&E: no first aid, no checks for broken bones, no nothing.
Any vehicle with a first aid kit can be called an ambulance. I think ambulances of this era had oxygen and and a ventilator and that's about it. I think trauma doctors would go out on certain jobs but that was on London only I think.
No neck brace or support of any kind. One false move from any of them and his life would have changed forever .
John cleese explaining to the foreign bloke was hillarious.
I started my driving career in 1980 driving vans & then HGVs until 2016, the M62 was a regular run until 2008 when I went local only (Bristol to Wales). Great police in those days 'up north' & one incident springs to mind. Driving vans for a printing company in Bristol my boss informed me in 1984 that he was buying me a brand new VW LT35 6 cylinder diesel van, these were fast!! Driving over the M62 & reaching the top of a hill in the 3rd lane & starting a downhill run passing 2 lanes of now accelerating trucks I looked at my speedo to see I was doing 80mph & still accelerating, as I passed the trucks & pulled in to the inside lane I noticed a police Range Rover following me. He stayed behind as I pulled into the services & stopped beside me, as the driver walked over to me I was expecting a speeding ticket...no... his words stay with me still....." Is that one of those new 6 cylinder turbo diesels?" I said yes & turning to his mate he says " I knew it was the moment he hit 90mph, I told you they were quick!" turning to me he said "Just hold the right foot back a bit driver, I know you were passing the trucks but it only takes a second to lose control" & off they drove....& no ticket!
One of my favourite videos of all time! Just amazing vehicles too.
1979, I was fifteen and living with my mum and dad in south east London. Life back then seems a million miles away from the politically correct, health and safety driven times we live in now. Back then they just cleared the road and caused as little delay as possible. Nowadays they cordon off the M25 for six hours if a leaf blows across the carriageway.
It’s so sad to see. This country has been destroyed sadly.
Only the wrong type of leaf
@@Retro_Rich a wet leaf
@@brianbadonde9039 Bello
CARA, ESSES PATRULHEIROS DE TRÂNSITO DE RODOVIAS INGLESAS TRABALHAVAM, E MUITO, ISSO, EM 1979, QUE DEMAIS!! PERCEBE SE O AMOR E DEDICAÇÃO DELES EM SALVAR VIDAS, PARABÉNS!! COM TODA A CERTEZA, ALGUNS JÁ SE FORAM, E OS QUE AINDA ESTÃO ENTRE NÓS, DEVEM TER ENTRE 70 E 80 ANOS, OU MAIS. ADOREI, AMEI ESSE EXCELENTE E MARAVILHOSO VÍDEO!!
If only we had police like this today ensuring lane discipline!
Total agree
But now a days everyone hogs the middle lane
It's so annoying
OK, now I have watched all of it = just about one of the very best things ever filmed and certainly the greatest must-see on RUclips (as there's mostly crap otherwise on offer ; but try Second Side Up!).
All these guys deserve a lot of respect
I remember 1979..a bad year for lots of snow....proper winters we had then.....thanks for sharing a good old by gone age
The good old days. Just hear the emergency vehicle's sirens brings back lots of memories
Quality film when coppers where coppers. Its like it was a competition to keep it open. When the ambulance hit the police car and the copper said well we didnt need that car.
31:32 Copper: Do you know why we stopped you?
Bloke: lights not on?
Copper: No, for wearing a tank top in this weather.
July 2024.
Hats off to those hardcore police men of the 70s
They really did their jobs properly and risk them too.
I was only a 10 year old back then and remembered those long sideburns, dustbin jacket wearing hard men of the 70s. Just like those actors in the sweeneys.
I really really wished that I could relive that era of time in the UK. Very special times back them
43:12 That Range Rover is a specialist Fire Service rescue vehicle. It look`s impressive even these days and this was 41 years ago :-) .
A primitive rescue tender, but totaly agree ,bloody great vehicle
@@mortgagewizard40 According to the DVLA website it lived until 1995
Its a Carmicheal conversion, also used at airports and by the RAF.
Thanks for sharing. My dad was on the unit at this time.
1979 when every copper seemed to be a moustacheio man 🥸🥸🥸😂😂.
Playing chicken on the motorway removing debris 😂. That was so normal back then, how things have changed.
Great vid.
My goodness what a winter that was I remember it well, it actually started in 1978 and over flowed eventually into 1979 I was on the M62 three times a week getting on at Howden and doing delivers in West Yorkshire and on Mondays down to Manchester Airport.Everyone talks about the beast from the East compared to 78/79 in my mind it was a snow flurry, as winter's go, we are on the East Coast and it wasn't that bad but of course some places were effected more than others.
I was born on 21st December 1978. My father didn't get to the hospital in time because of the bad weather.
From the days before the police dressed in para military kit merely to make themselves look tough but actually were tough and realised the public didn’t need to be told everything is a danger! I love all the old cars too!
Brilliant video,only seems like yesterday to me.
Brilliant video ,ive never seen so many f88s/f86s/f89 in1 video,plus the good old range rovers with proper coppers,.
That was brilliant! I can’t believe how hands on the cops were. They wouldn’t bother with half of that nowadays. They’re leaving it to the ambulance crews, and recovery trucks.
Thanks for uploading this, haven’t seen it in years. Takes me back to the old days on the 62.
Well I was three when this was made.......... absolutely awesome
I drive the M62 almost every day, fascinating documentary and even now the uppermost stretch is wild and remote. As someone who has to travel between Yorkshire and Cheshire for work, this road is a lifeline, especially in the winter.
You poor guy. No amount of money woukd make me drive thus journey to work everyday. I'd rather work in Morrisons in Bradford on £8 an hour than go through that everyday.
I drove from Shaw (Oldham) to Leeds commuting. Never seen the weather as bad as this but have known it to snow. It's a great road apart from the horrible traffic!
Whenever you see people older than 45 in the street remember they survived this dystopian world !!!!
Had a job putting Armco barrier up in late 80 s cold n grim on that top even in summer enjoyed job tho 🥶
19:20 some things never change, car stuck in the middle lane.
Great cars in this, not like all the hard-drive crap today. Lots of MkIV Cortinas, now the most endangered of all Cortinas. Funny seeing that ambulance crash into that police car at 39:52, though wouldn't have reassured casulties needing to go to hospital. Although 10 do remember the winter of 1979. It was a very bad one but brilliant for sledging.
Even more fun in a Sunbeam Imp Sport!!
Absolute class documentary them cops had balls unlike today’s mollycoddled risk adversed fairies
All bow down to the Range Rover !
WOW 4 weeks after this my mom gave birth to me 2nd April 1979. It just seems mad to watch this program that was on only weeks before I was born. Then to here the guy on here say just cause someone's got a new £5000car with disc brakes. He thinks he can stop on a 2 penny peace. N he just can't lol.
I was expecting George best to be found near the e type crash....
Serious H&S issues compared to nowadays. They close the motorway fir the slightest collisions now.
Fogger. The way they ducked between traffic to clear road. Bloody wonderful how they just got on with the task at hand. No waiting for Highway Agency etc to say its gonna take hours to clear!
yonmons Thank you for posting this, I remember well seeing this. Watching with my Father as a 14 year old. He was a wagon driver, I do miss him and wish I could share this with him. I am in awe at GMP and had friends who worked in traffic. Respect.
Fucking love seeing all the old types of car, bloody brilliant upload.......thanks 👏👏
Excellent video! Great to see the Police using some common sense. Now they would just close the motorway for at least 12 hours.
The police don't handle motorway maintenance anymore, even then there are reasons why stretches of motorway need to be closed