Patrolling policemen found a car stopped in the central reservation of the Hertfordshire section of the M1, and inside were an elderly couple calmly eating sandwiches.

This was just one of a number of crazy incidents reported by north Watford motorway patrol policemen for an article in the autumn issue of the Automobile Association magazine Drive.

With the fog and snow of winter almost upon us, Drive asked the men from north Watford to tabulate the incidents they saw on the M1 during the round-the-clock patrols in the patrol vehicle codenamed Tango 6.

One police patrolman told Drive about how he had stopped a man walking up the central reservation.

“Am I right for Edinburgh?” the man had asked.

A sergeant told how a man left his Mini on the hard shoulder and went to telephone the AA. When he returned, all four wheels were gone.

But perhaps the craziest of all happened before Drive carried out its survey. A north Watford patrolman described the incident: “A soldier pulled up in the fast lane of the motorway and went to sleep. When we woke him, he said: ‘I thought it was a nice quiet place to have a kip’.”

[From the Watford Observer of October 16, 1970]

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