Originally published at: Lucky cop gets out of the way from car 3 seconds before it's smashed by a van | Boing Boing
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Well, that speeding driver was certainly made safer by being pulled over by a cop.
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I just can’t believe how often this seems to happen.
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But who in his right mind stops a car on the left of a highway??? Why is there even an emergency lane there?
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It’s the most dangerous part of being a cop. Funny that they don’t want to give it up, though, as part of the defunding process. Too many cops make too much extra money on tickets. For some, the chance to unload their whole firearm into a vehicle that may have kids in it is too much of a draw.
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13 over on that part of I-25 is barely keeping up with the flow of traffic.
That whole stretch from North Denver to Wyoming border is nuts!
Only an idiot pulls over into the left breakdown lane on a major 10 lane interstate highway with traffic blowing by you at 80 mph. Sounds like this person was that idiot.
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I expect this every time I get on the road. People are awful drivers and it goes far beyond distraction. I’d estimate that at least 70% of drivers follow far too close at high speeds which is exactly how this shit happens. There’s no time to react with limited visibility and a few inches of drift causes catastrophe.
Of course, my dad was a Missouri State Highway Patrolman, so I was subject to a lot more exposure without him even really telling me. We were a church family (ugh) and he had to visit the same family twice to tell him them that their son and daughter were killed on the road a few years apart. He had taught both of the kids at church camp and volunteered to go to the parents’ house and tell them so he could offer comfort. I just can’t imagine what that second visit was like.
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Safety first…
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not to nit-pick, but i don’t think the officer “got out of his patrol car”. he was clearly wearing a motorcycle helmet.
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I was taught never to do that. Apparently it’s most dangerous at night on less-busy roads because people instinctively expect to go to the left of the cop (British roads and former territories aside). They often realize as they get close how wrong they are and, in trying to correct, end up causing a wreck.
In this instance I’m perplexed about the cause. There’s a frame or two immediately when the minivan comes into the picture where you can see that they’re well over the yellow line. Lacking other evidence I’m going with distracted driving; almost certainly with a phone involved.
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Around here, the highway patrol won’t let you do that. They call to you on the PA (which yes you can in hear in your car on the freeway, impressively) to pull off at the next ramp and follow you down to a safe spot. I’m surprised that isn’t a typical process everywhere?
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I have had CHP specifically tell me to pull over to the center median as I was trying to get over. I didn’t understand it either.
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Tow truck drivers are also vulnerable to this kind of thing. I’ve seen them changing tires on the side of the freeway where they are inches from cars speeding by at 80mph. And they can’t get fat from citations they write. In my mind, they are the heroes out on the roads since they are there to truly help, not involve you in the criminal justice system.
Same goes with firefighters, they’re the heroes. But then cities like Sunnyvale, Calif, mix the two, which messes up my whole mental model of the good guys vs the bad guys.
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78-55=23
Agreed, but I’m still wondering why he appeared to dismount his bike on the right side? Perhaps he was simply retrieving items from that side of the bike. There’s a video cut there that makes it confusing.
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They were almost certainly not concentrating on driving; whether they were distracted by a phone, a passenger, or just daydreaming about stuff, they sure as hell weren’t paying attention to the road. But when they’re not actively thinking about driving, people tend to drive towards whatever they’re looking at. The flashing lights catch the corner of their eye, and that’s the direction their vehicle steers. Driving into emergency vehicles on the sides of the road is apparently very, very common.
In the frame you mentioned, you can see that when he struck the vehicle that the corner of his bumper was going into the license plate. He must have missed the bike by mere inches.
Police procedures are to defensively position their car closer to the traffic stream than the car they’ve stopped to help prevent their prey from being struck by “absorbing” the incoming car first. However, a motorcycle cop doesn’t have the luxury of a massive Crown Vic to provide a safety barrier. You can see in the video that he left his bike far to the left of the shoulder.
That may even have played a part in this crash: the driver who struck the car may have been on a line for the edge of the flashing bike lights, which in this case put them well over the yellow line. But on the other hand, he would almost certainly have been killed if his bike had been hit and the wreckage struck him. I don’t know the procedure for motorcycle cop stops.
Agreed. This looks like just north of the 36 exit going north. Traffic consistently moves over 80mph through there. Surprised/not surprised that a cop would pull someone over for speeding there.
And yes, every driver here in Denver is an idiot, hence pulling over on the left side.
There were about three seconds in the video between the cop leaving the car and the car being struck, but you can see by the movement of the clouds and shadows that a few minutes have passed between the two events.
It is left as a problem for the student to determine exactly how much time elapsed.
Thank you for attending my TED talk
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