A HIT and run victim who saw a car run a red light rang the police but was asked: “why are you calling us?”

Simon Lucas was pulling out of The Gate, in Arkley, when a blue van hit his side mirror but sped off without stopping on the night of January 30.

The van driver was hurtling down the road “erratically” while his passenger waved a beer can out of the window.

When he ignored a red light, Mr Lucas decided to turn the matter over to the police to help avoid a potentially fatal crash.

But he was surprised when the operator refused to send for a police officer.

Mr Lucas said: “I was stunned – absolutely stunned. The guy was driving dangerously and they just didn’t care. I think he may have been under the influence of alcohol.

“The van charged off pretty quickly and that put other people on the streets of Barnet and Arkley at risk of being hit.

“When you make a 999 call – you don’t expect to be totally disregarded. The driver could have caused some serious damage that night and the police would have been responsible.”

He added: “I and none of my passengers were injured but we could have been. I expected him to stop and give me his details and on an angry-scale of one to 10, I was about 200.

“However, one has to accept that in life you will encounter idiots and while that was frustrating, the main point here is that the police didn’t do anything about the dangerous driver.

“It’s the principle of it all.”

Mr Lucas, who lives in Flitwick but was visiting his girlfriend in Finchley at the time, has since written to Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe to ask why his call was ignored.

In the letter, he wrote: “The initial call handler I spoke could not possibly have been more disinterested than he was – I would even describe him as argumentative towards me.

“The police had a golden opportunity to take a dangerous drunk driver off the road.

The impression I came away with is that no action was taken at all. The more I consider this, I feel confident that my 999 call cannot simply have been ignored.”

The Times Series has contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment.