Retired army major erects incredibly lifelike police mannequin in village with fake radar gun to make slow speeding drivers
- John Winskill, 53, put dummy up to slow speeding drivers in Rushall, Wiltshire
Published: 08:16, 22 December 2023 | Updated: 08:16, 22 December 2023
Standing 6ft-6in tall in crash helmet and fluorescent jacket, he certainly looks like he’s part of the local traffic policing unit.
And many drivers who see the ‘fully poseable’ former tailor’s dummy stood behind a fake radar gun at the roadside are also taken in.
The dummy, called Wilson, is the brainchild of villager John Winskill, a retired Army Major who swung into action after watching drivers treat the main road through the Wiltshire village of Rushall ‘as though it was Silverstone’.
Mr Winskill, 53, said Wilson, who features a rubber facial mask, is so lifelike drivers have pulled up beside him to have a word, adding: ‘I saw one woman pull out and talk to him through her passenger window.
‘When I went out to tell her he was a mannequin she said she thought he was just being rude.’
This dummy, called Wilson, is the brainchild of villager John Winskill, a retired Army Major who swung into action after watching drivers treat the main road through the Wiltshire village of Rushall ‘as though it was Silverstone’
Standing 6ft-6in tall in crash helmet and fluorescent jacket, he certainly looks like he’s part of the local traffic policing unit
Mr Winskill, 53, (pictured) said Wilson, who features a rubber facial mask, is so lifelike drivers have pulled up beside him to have a word, adding: ‘I saw one woman pull out and talk to him through her passenger window’
Spectacle-wearing Wilson has his own name badge on his reflective jacket.
Mr Winskill said the idea for the mannequin came from a ruse he once pulled when working as part of the Nato peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994.
‘For security we were supposed to drive around the base in pairs and I was forever being pulled up by the Americans for not having anyone in the vehicle with me’, he said.
‘I came across an old mannequin in a bombed-out haberdashery shop in Sarajevo. I put it in the passenger seat and was never bothered again.’
Now a management consultant working in strategic defence, he said Wilson – who patrols a few days a week in the morning and evening rush hours – does succeed in slowing down traffic.
‘When I’m working from home I see the brake lights coming on outside’, he added.
‘Once or twice I’ve left Wilson there when I’ve been out running errands. I’ve had oncoming cars flashing me as I approach the village to warn me that he’s there.
‘His legs are immobile but his other joints can be adjusted, so he can be made to look very lifelike.
Sometimes we find he has been molested somewhat, or moved into unusual positions.’
Now a management consultant working in strategic defence, he said Wilson – who patrols a few days a week in the morning and evening rush hours – does succeed in slowing down traffic
He said: ‘His legs are immobile but his other joints can be adjusted, so he can be made to look very lifelike.
Sometimes we find he has been molested somewhat, or moved into unusual positions’
But Wiltshire police said Wilson, who is usually strapped to a lamppost as he monitors the 30mph road, was not impersonating an officer and that based on the evidence at hand, no offences had been committed.
Mr Winskill added: ‘Nowhere on Wilson does it say ‘police’ and Wilson is only ever placed on private land.
‘Just the other day a police car drove past and the officer wound down the window and gave me the ‘thumbs up’.’
Mr Winskill previously hit the headlines a decade ago, when he was injured and two others were killed in a road crash in Peru, while acting as logistics expert for a British team taking part in the Dakar rally. His Land Rover was hit by a local driver, shunting him into oncoming traffic where it hit a taxi carrying six people without seatbelts on. The driver and a passenger died.
Police opened an investigation but despite a collision investigator employed by Mr Winskill determining he was not at fault, he was informed by Peruvian courts in 2018 that they held him responsible.
Mr Winskill, who lives with wife Lisa, a 50-year-old hypnotherapist and life coach, said he remains ‘in limbo’ over the incident, which he said had a bearing on his decision to deploy Wilson – sourced from a tailor’s shop in Watford, Hertfordshire – in his village.
‘When you experience that life changing moment and live through that trauma, the trauma doesn’t leave you’, he said.
The taxi that was going too fast – speed was definitely an aspect of that collision.’
References
- ^ Andy Dolan (www.dailymail.co.uk)