TWO traffic officers have been praised by police after being confronted by a woman brandishing a 12 inch knife.

Ian Nesbitt from Middleton, and his colleague Darren Nuttall, were patrolling part of the M60 when they spotted a woman walking down the central reservation.

The officers had planned to stop the traffic, approach the woman and lead her to safety to the hard shoulder - but she pulled out a knife and started screaming as Mr Nesbitt crossed the carriageway.

Ian, 35, said: "It was a bit of a shock when she pulled out the knife but I went straight back to the hard shoulder and we got the police involved right away."

After alerting Greater Manchester Police the traffic officers stopped all the traffic and informed drivers what was going on.

Darren, aged 37 from Bury, added: "At one point she came towards our car with the knife but we told her we wouldn’t talk to her unless she put the knife down. She calmed down a bit and then the police arrived and arrested her."

The police officers dealing with the incident immediately radioed the traffic officers’ control room in the Highways Agency’s north west regional control centre at Newton-le-Willows - praising the calm and cool way they had managed the initial situation.

Jamie Carr, regional operations manager in charge of the north west traffic officer service, said: "We frequently come across pedestrians on the network and while cases are rarely as extreme as this our traffic officers are trained to make a risk assessment of situations and react accordingly.

"Traffic officers are not the police. We are on the motorway network to help drivers and to keep traffic on the move but we are often the first on the scene at incidents and traffic officers have to keep their wits about them and use their judgement.

"It is clear that in spite of the very challenging circumstances in this case Darren and Ian’s quick thinking prevented what might have been a nasty accident involving this pedestrian and legitimate motorway users."

Ian and Darren were patrolling around junction 4 at Gatley on Thursday 9 October when the incident happened.