Traffic vigilante comes up with sneaky way to scare speeders in his village

22 December 2023 , 11:09

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Traffic vigilante comes up with sneaky way to scare speeders in his village

A retired Army major has recruited a life-like dummy to try to deter drivers from speeding in his village.

John Winskill believes the mannequin, dressed to look like a traffic officer on patrol, has already slowed down motorists in Rushall, Wiltshire. John was injured when the support vehicle he was driving was involved in a fatal crash in the

. So he has put up the dummy, named Wilson, beside a telegraph pole near his home, where the narrow pavements mean residents have to "take their life in their hands with the speed of traffic that runs through".

It is an offence to impersonate police officers but Wiltshire Police said this was not the case for Wilson so, based on the evidence at hand, no crime has been committed. So John is allowed to put Wilson on shift a couple of hours a day, twice a week. Speaking to BBC News, John said: "When Wilson's on patrol it has definitely made a difference... We have a real problem with traffic flow coming through the village, (it's) far too fast. The only way to calm the traffic down was to put up a deterrent."

John Winskill is pictured alongside Wilson, a mannequin used to deter drivers from speeding (BBC)

Speed was understood to have been a factor when John, taking part in a charity event in Dakar, was hurt in his crash. The vehicle he was travelling in was hit by a taxi. Since then, the former Army major has campaigned for more to be done to prevent speeding in his village and afar.

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And residents in Rushall, which has a busy primary school, have backed the man's creative ploy. Elizabeth Newton, who lives in the settlement on the edge of the North Wessex Downs, said: "I think it's brilliant, absolutely brilliant and it does stop the traffic because they are going slowly now... They'd normally have gone past so quickly that you wouldn't see them."

Others have been so convinced Wilson is real, they've tried to engage in conversation with the mannequin. John continued: "We've had a few people talk to him. There was a woman who stopped beside Wilson and I could hear her calling to him though her passenger window. When I went out and told her he was a mannequin, she said she thought he was just being very rude."

Bradley Jolly