This article is incorrect. Most, perhaps all, of those hitting the body first DID stop and notify emergency services - didn't realise what the shape was in the road until too late - acted in a way that stopped a major accident from happening and are now highly traumitised and worried about how wrong articles like this will affect any family of the person.
Those few people hitting items later would not have been able to recognise this as a body and may well have found it hard to stop given the number of people already in the nearest layby and the lack of any hard shoulder.

He was my flat mate

I imagine they didnt completely drive over the body, it was probably hit from angles etc. It must be an awful thing to find out later that you drove over a human body. I know most people here are saying how could you not know, but like many are saying also, you do not expect to have a human body on a dual carraigeway at night. I used to drive alot before we got out of the rat race and there are certain stretches of road which are horrendous at night the a34 has no lights and I dont think it even has cats eyes you cant have full beam on because it blinds the cars on the other side so you have to drive 90% of the time with dipped headlights. So if you were driving along and you hit something you would automatically look in your rear view mirror but chances are you would just make out a large shape and just be thankful your car was still going. Plus there are so many weirdos out there you dont know its not a trap of some sort. So Im afraid I wouldnt stop I would go to the next services and report it to the police then.

I see 24 people made good use of the 'like' button on this story.

i cant believe the amount of comments that say these people wouldnt have known, if (and i am sure some people will know) you run over a fox you know from the bang and the car bouncing over it so no-one will convince me that you can drive over a human body and not know it unless of course you are in a huge lorry then you might have a point but not in a car

i don't know why they are making a big thing about people running over this poor unfortunate person as it was'nt that long ago when police ran over a kid on the m/a23 and they did'nt make a big deal about them doing it and police are supposed to be vigilante and notice things

Let's not get too self-righteous about this. It was a dark drizzly November night, we don't know how the body was clothed, it's a very busy road with traffic all around. The driver might get a glimpse of something dark, not necessarily in the middle of the road, and fell a bump. It could be anything, with no prospect of stopping sharply because of the small distance between vehicles and no option to change lanes for the same reason. I had a similar situation on the Forth Road bridge of all places - a milk crate on the carriageway and articulated lorries around me , one right on my tail. I hit my hazzard switch and slowed down to a stop, pushing the crate along the road then, in the midst of this my wife got outof the car and put the crate in a safe place. It was not a good experience.

As a police officer in the early 70's I dealt with a similar incident when a driver on his way to work on a dark winters morning about 7am hit what he thought was a bundle of rags in the middle of the road, he carried on to work. A short time later another more observant driver reported finding a body in the road. It was initially dealt with as a none acidental sudden death until tyre marks were found across the man's body. It later transpired that the man had indeed died of natural causes and the driver who ran over him read about it in the media and then came forward.
These types of incident do happen and it is not that unusual but normally drivers in the majority of cases do stop and investigate what they have hit..

I'm sure that any driver that inadvertantly drove over/struck this body knew that they had driven over/struck something. The decision not to stop will only be known by each individual driver, however, I doubt very much that any of these drivers would have been aware that it was a body they had driven over/struck. We all know what it's like to hit a lamp post or go down a pot hole, but a body??? I for one would only know that I had driven over/struck "something". If, as the report says,the road is dark and it was drizzling I dont honestly think that I would have stopped either, especially if my car seemed to be still driving OK. Just an honest opinion, thats all.

The body must have been flattened beyound reconition , guts & entrails and body parts everywhere .

The drivers must have been aware that they had run over something, like that body shaped mass that they saw in their headlights.
Of course many drivers care little about what goes on outside the coccoon of their darling car, they were probably more upset that their wheels might need adjusting after running over the corpse.
I wonder was the poor body dead when the first driver went over?
Or the 2nd?

I was a passenger in a car that hit a dog (already dead) and you KNOW you have hit something - it was all the driver could do to control the car.

My husband and I were driving on a duel carrigeway and hit a fox, we could not stop due to there being no hard shoulder or lay-by, we could not swerve as there was a huge lorry in the next lane, so I can understand WHY people didn't stop, but I cannot understand HOW they didn't know they had hit something. My thoughts are with his family at this sad time.

That is no excuse, Mo Smith5.......they have headlights don't they?