This is the location in Chingford where local resident Brian Elton, 72, was run down and killed by a police driver, in daylight on a Saturday afternoon.
Given the paucity of reported detail it is difficult to be certain of the precise circumstances, but as far as I can tell Mr Elton was walking from the triangle of land on the right, at the junction with Endlebury Road E4 (where he lived), left, across The Ridgeway. He was presumably crossing the road from roughly where the car is in the above photo. How far across the road he got before he was run down is unclear. A 72-year-old seems unlikely to have dashed out into the road. I assume that the police car was coming towards the camera, from Chingford police station, which is nearby, to the north.
There was an interesting letter in The Waltham Forest Guardian (July 9) from Brian Lione, who lives on The Ridgeway. He writes
I would guess that the police car involved was one of those where a record is kept of the vehicle's speed, and so the IPCC knows precisely what the driver's speed was at impact and in the moments leading up to the collision. They deem it "acceptable". The question of what the IPCC thinks is "acceptable" in a 30 mph speed limit is a very interesting one. The IPCC plainly has no intentions of telling us.
I blogged about this crash here and here. I’ve also since noted another high speed police car crash, which, locally, makes three high speed police car crashes in just six weeks.
