The motorist who collided with a highway blockade near Meppel on Wednesday has filed a report against the waste dumpers. The man drove on the ramp to the A32 on a pile of hay bales with rubble. His car was a total loss.
“There were beams in the hay bales, so the impact was really big. It is a miracle that there were no casualties,” says police spokesman Thijs Damstra. “The motorist has now filed a report. We include this in our investigation into who did this. But we are also investigating whether other people have helped.”
Several accidents have occurred in recent days due to blockades by activists. On the A7 near Midwolde, the driver of a passenger car was no longer able to avoid a dumping of, among other things, car tires. On the same highway near Frieschepalen, a vehicle collided with dumped waste. The vehicles sustained significant damage. The drivers were unharmed in all cases.
The police started a major investigation yesterday into the people who have erected the blockades in the north of the Netherlands. “Persons who dump waste consciously take the risk that road users may be seriously injured. This has far-reaching consequences,” said police spokesman Damstra. “We are currently urgently looking for witnesses, but also for images from cameras and dashcams.”
Damstra cannot say how long the investigation will take. “We are now fully engaged in it. We have already done trace research, registration numbers have been recorded and we have spoken with witnesses, so it is not as if we are starting completely from scratch. But we are now really looking for concrete information that people have not shared with us yet. Of course we hope to be able to find out who is responsible for the dumping as soon as possible.”