Watch: Car drives on wrong side of carriageway at M22 outside Randalstown
Amy Cochrane Today at 15:39
A motorist has described how “disconcerting” it was when they were driving along a stretch of motorway towards Belfast on Wednesday evening only to be met by a car driving the wrong way down the motorway in the fast lane.
Dashcam footage appears to show the red Peugeot vehicle driving at speed going the wrong direction on the M22 road and heading towards oncoming traffic.
They also appeared to have no lights on.
Brian Doyle told Belfast Telegraph: "I was driving down to Belfast last night just outside Randalstown on the M22 around 7pm when I came across this person driving in the fast lane of the motorway going the wrong way.
“I flashed my lights and beeped my horn but got no reaction – they were moving quite quickly and did not turn their head to look at me.
“I immediately called the police and reported the incident and thankfully I did not hear of any accidents, but it could have been a very nasty head on for anyone going the right way in the fast lane.
“It was a pretty disconcerting experience.”
Mr Doyle said that when he called the police, they said they would dispatch a car to try and catch the vehicle.
He told the Belfast Telegraph he would drive that stretch of the motorway quite often.
“I live in Castledawson and work in Belfast, so I’d be driving that quite often but it’s the first time I’ve seen anything like that,” he said.
“I remember spotting it from a distance and thinking ‘is this for real?’ and the car kept coming closer and closer and up close it was quite scary.
“It was pretty concerning because of the speed they were doing; I was driving about 65mph at the time and they were doing the same speed if not more, in totally the wrong direction.
“I was lucky there was no car driving beside me in the fast lane because it’s used a lot as you can imagine, and I’m also lucky no one was overtaking me at that point because it would have been a pretty bad head on crash.”
He suspected the car entered the motorway via one of the turn-offs.
“That stretch of the road is when the A6 turns into the M22 so there would be a slip road going off to go left onto Randalstown, but it comes down from a roundabout so the car must have come down at that point and joined the wrong way or even at the Antrim turn-off and the roundabout before then, but it’s hard to know,” he said.
“Thankfully it wasn’t rush hour and it was reasonably quiet, the car behind me was about 100 metres away but the lane coming out of Belfast was quite busy so I don’t know how they didn’t see that.”
The PSNI has been contacted for comment.
by spectacle-ar_failure
8 comments
For more info from another witness [this post from last night](https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/F9PBxwR8vk)
Is this the lady with dementia?
Just waiting on a mate
Drove home last night from Toome to Belfast and seen this. Basically same thing, flashed my lights and beeped the horn, no reaction from them whatsoever, car was flying too.
I had to stop reading the post after she referred to the lane for overtaking as the fast lane
Bloody hell. It’s a wonder no one got hurt, sounds like she went a quare distance
It’s surprising how often you see this sort of thing
Wrong way, down a one way streeeet
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