A SCOTS BBC travel reporter had to beg listeners to phone her with traffic news after rush-hour CCTV cameras blacked out.
Radio Scotland presenter Sarah Cruickshank was left in the dark after a technical glitch saw all of the cameras on Scotland’s motorways shut down.
Instead of helping drivers to avoid problems, she spent the duration of the three hour show appealing to listeners to help her out by telling her when they were in traffic jams.
Her colleagues on the Good Morning Scotland programme joked that her camera feed was fine, and it was just a rare Scottish appearance from the sunshine causing glare on the screens blocking her view of the roads.
But problems set in from Miss Cruickshank’s very first travel bulletin of the morning at 6.30am.
She told listeners: “There is mist and fog on the road so please do take care, but I’ve got another plea – this time for information I’m afraid, because my cameras aren’t working.
“If you do have any information on the road, please call in, it would be much appreciated.”
The blackout forced her to repeat her appeal for help a further four times throughout the popular morning news show.
Presenter Gary Robertson said: “Perhaps it’s a heat haze; that’s why you can’t see anything on the cameras.”
But listeners called the show in their droves to let Miss Cruickshank know where the traffic was snarled up, with typical rush-hour jams on the M8 reported.
A spokesperson for BBC Scotland said: “It was a problem with the camera feed supplied by Traffic Scotland and we therefore welcomed the feedback from the public who had already travelled to work and could tell us about the traffic conditions they had experienced.”
A spokesperson for Traffic Scotland confirmed some screens around the M8 had failed.
They said: “We can confirm there was a technical challenge with some of the cameras covering the central belt this morning.
“All cameras are now up and running.”
Last year Cruickshank became an internet star on YouTube, when a video of her presenting the weather in Gaelic while wearing a tartan dress clocked almost 20,000 views.
