Run out of juice ? Don’t get far if you only put a tenners worth in it .

True - but what I'm getting at is, why didn't the car get pushed (or towed) onto the verge and out of harm's way in nearly 3 hours?

I'm guessing there must have been some sort of fault that had immobilised it and stopped it from rolling.

I saw the same programme and it took two hours for the puncture repair on the patrol’s own car on the hard shoulder.
It was an eye opener though to see drivers speeding through and ignoring the traffic cones while the team were trying to put them out and clearly signalling that drivers should not use the slip road. Gives the other side to the many many times you see gantry signs that are still in place long after the road is clear.

Going to guess that it was locked in gear and that the regular recovery agents weren’t able to deal with it because of ground/wheel arch clearance, so maybe needed a specialist truck/hi-ab to shift it. And there’s no way of knowing whether that’d be a police duty garage or the driver’s own breakdown cover (if they had any cover).

Many recovery trucks carry a pair of plastic skids which go under locked wheels, allowing the vehicle to be winched on.