Katie Dagley, age 19, was driving home from work when she approached a single-lane bridge she’d traveled over many times before. The light indicated she had the right of way, so off she went. On the other side of the bridge, 18-year-old James Cope was also traveling across the bridge because he had the right of way. As it turns out, the lights on the bridge were malfunctioning as a result of a slime trail left by a slug or snail. Katie Dagley was killed in a head-on collision caused by a snail or slug.
The wreck occurred on a bridge at Alvecote, near Tamworth, West Midlands. The light that controlled travel between one side of the bridge and the other malfunctioned only 20 minutes before the fatal accident, where Katie Dagley’s Ford Ka collided with James Cope’s Fiat Punto.
“There are traffic lights at either end and there are white lines across the road. The fault was logged at the monitoring agency and sent to county highways at 10.52pm, some 20 minutes before the collision,” said senior police inspector Andy Stevens. “The reason for the fault was due to a slug or a snail. There was a trail across the circuit board and it had short-circuited it – it was one of those things, it’s a tragedy.”
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