RPU meaning in General ?

The Roads Policing Unit (RPU) is the motorway and trunk-road police unit of a British police force.

Most territorial police forces established traffic departments in the early 1950s, although the first was established by the Metropolitan Police Service in 1919, but it was with the opening of the M1 motorway in November 1959 that the need for the police to have a specialist department dedicated to policing the new roads was recognised. The 1960s saw the start of construction of new motorways, so the traffic departments grew. One of the first fatal accidents on the M1 occurred near Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire in December 1959. The Roads Policing Unit also has different names in a few police forces - such as Roads Policing Group of the North Yorkshire Police and the Force Traffic Unit of the West Midlands Police.