Watch moment impatient grey-haired lady rearranges roadworks cones herself in bid to escape traffic jam – before a ‘hero in hi-viz’ intervenes
- Video footage shows the ‘unbelievable’ moment on the A12 near Colchester
This is the moment an ‘impatient’ elderly woman stuck in gridlock traffic moved roadwork cones to drive into an unblocked lane – only for a seemingly furious hi-vis worker to demand she get back in line.
HGV driver Anthony Foulkes was waiting for an accident to clear on the A12 near Colchester, Essex, on Tuesday when he witnessed a ‘cheeky’ driver leave her Ford Fiesta ‘to escape the traffic’.
The 46-year-old’s ‘unbelievable’ video shows the woman walk into a coned-off area that separates the waiting cars and a free-flowing lane to move two rows of cones apart and create a gap.
To Anthony’s dismay she gets back in her vehicle and takes a sharp right through the first row and appears to wait for a gap to turn into the other lane.
A ‘hero in high-viz’ then confronts the woman and points for her to return to the traffic queue, guides her as she reverses and then appears frustrated as he has to put back the heavy cones she moved.
The ‘unbelievable’ video shows the woman walk into a coned-off area that separates the waiting cars and a free-flowing lane to move two rows of cones apart and create a gap
The woman left her Ford Fiesta on a bid to escape the traffic jam on the A12 near Colchester
A ‘hero in high-viz’ confronts the woman and points for her to return to the traffic queue
Anthony has since claimed ‘a woman of her age should know better’ and believes she was ‘too posh to wait’.
He claims he and the impatient driver were forced to wait around 55 minutes until the accident was cleared.
The video has been viewed more than 300,000 times with users calling the incident ‘unbelievable’ and another joking the woman ‘had to meet Doris for bingo night’.
Anthony, from Preston, Lancashire, said: ‘She’s just impatient and too posh to wait. I couldn’t believe she was actually doing it.
‘A lady of her age should know better, if it was a 20-year-old lad then I’d understand it. She couldn’t even lift the cones. Luckily a hero in a hi-viz turned up.
‘She had ants in her pants. She was out of her car in around six minutes. She chatted to some people in front and behind then built up some courage.
‘She moved them all wrong. She should have staggered the cones so the gaps were on an angle so she didn’t have to make such a sharp left and then a sharp right. She messed it up.
‘If she hadn’t been stopped, a HGV could have been coming and wouldn’t have been able to stop then he’d have to move into the lane to his right that was moving the opposite way.
‘A lady of her age should know better, if it was a 20-year-old lad then I’d understand it. She couldn’t even lift the cones. Luckily a hero in a hi-viz turned up,’ a witness said
The video has been viewed more than 300,000 times with users calling the incident ‘unbelievable’
‘The cones are there for a reason. You’ve just got to put up with it. Everyone else has to. If someone’s had an accident you can’t do anything about it.’
The incident, which happened at around 1.50pm, occurred in an area where a contraflow system is in place, where a lane is created travelling in the opposite direction to usual.
Anthony says it’s because there are roadworks being done on the usual lanes, so that and the accident caused the lengthy backlog.
His video, captioned ‘stuck on the A12, and this patient lady hasn’t got time to wait’, has been shared more than 2,000 times.
One commented: ‘Oh my goodness. The cheek of some people.’
A second joked: ‘She’s gotta meet Doris in the pub for a big bingo night.’
A third simply said: ‘Unbelievable.’
