Trooper Sideswipes Truck Driver, Cites Him Anyway (dashcam!)

Maybe the truck driver should have tried a 'citizen's arrest' on the LEO. I wonder how that would have gone over?

I think I'd pay money to see that video!

The more i thought about this, the more ridiculous i think the driver was. I was on I 25 last week when a dump truck pulling a trailer tried to merge from the on ramp. While still on the ramp, he lost control of the trailer and it swayed violently across three lanes.

I threw my hazards on, slowed way way down and moved as far left as i could. The truck rolled.

This guy doesnt appear to even be aware of his surroundings. If i drove like him when that truck rolled last week, i would have wound up colliding with him too.

idiot. and even worse that he and the company released the video promoting he is in the right.

If you read the article it says he has "decades" of experience and a car hit him afterwards. So i watched again.

That means he really wasnt slowing at all. When the cop is two lanes over, his angle shows his intention to cross more lanes. In order for the cop to strike the door, the truck was going much faster than the cop or the truck would have hit the cops door with the truck grill.

and to top it off.. the sirens were blaring. a great indication of distance. if they get louder.... watch out.

we talk about accountability here a lot. The drivers initial thoughts were that he was losing his job, career, and house. If he truly thought he was innocent, his thought probably would have been to sue.

It looked to me that the truck driver was oblivious to what was happening around him. I think any driver at that time should have been thinking one thing: Slow down and evaluate the situation. I still wonder if the LEO had 'situational awareness', though. The sideswipe should have been avoidable.

I have watched the video several times. This was ugly and from my experience I believe both drivers made mistakes. I am aware of the procedure of the slow weave to slow traffic. Ca uses it alot. First of all the apparent speed the truck driver never heard the siren until he was on top of the police unit, however he saw the lights and could see it was moving. Truck driver didn’t appear to slow, big mistake when approaching any warning lights. There is a short view of a white car to the right of the truck that was initially going the same speed. This tells me the officers intentions were not clear and others thought he was going to remain straight. The officers speed was insufficient to get in front of the traffic before starting the weave. The way ca officers are trained is to get on the freeway to the middle at a speed fast enough to get a cushion of space then start the weave gradually and slowing gradually until the traffic is slowed sufficently. In the end both drivers made mistakes that led to the crash. The trucking company would be sueing the state of utah if they really belived they did nothing wrong. Just my 2 cents

So I went back and watched it a couple more times after reading more replies. I bet if we could have watched more video prior to the dash cam, I wonder if it would show this cop was keeping traffic behind him for a fair distance and the truck driver thought he was going to be able to pass him when the cop swerved over to keep the merging traffic behind him.

I'm going to mostly withhold judgement, simply because there isn't enough evidence in this short clip to base a solid judgement on.

Whether you're quick to blame the trooper or trucker, too much is missing to know what really led up to this.

How long was the trooper trying to slow traffic prior to the start of the clip? Because the first thing I saw was a trooper moving to the right, away from the travel lanes. Trucker should've slowed some, yes. Maybe he did, we cant tell. But slowing too much would also create a hazard, and we could be having a different discussion perhaps.

Was there another truck to the left of trucker, preventing him from safely moving over? We don't know.

Was trucker in fact slowing, but not so much that he'd get rear-ended by a Super Trucker tailgating him? Again, we don't know the situation off-camera.

I offer that the trucker did in fact slow significantly. So much so that he only rolled 20 ft or so after impact. That is clear in the video. Obviously he was on the binders well prior to the trooper swerving.

I have a hard time pinning blame here. It's easy to sit here and pass judgement, but the facts as I see them are lacking enough evidence to really make a decision.

I want to see the 2-3 minutes of the video loop leading up to this.

While there's plenty of "monday morning quarterbacking", and "jailhouse attorneying" going on here - the fact remains - HAD THE TROOPER BEEN PAYING ATTENTION, HE WOULD NOT HAVE RUN INTO THE TRUCK.

It's not like he ran into a guy on a bicycle - HE RAN INTO A GD TRUCK.

Difficult to tell from the video (which was probably a 30 second "incident capture", and there may not be video that preceded the incident), and the truck driver probably should have slowed down more until he figured out WTH the cop was trying to do (and y'all know I normally take the side of the LEO) - if the cop was looking where he was going, instead of taking for granted that flashing lights gives him a license to swerve across 6-8 lanes of traffic without regard to anything else going on on the roadway - he wouldn't have hit the truck.

And again - the fact that the driver still has a job, means the company feels there was enough fault belonging to the cop that they essentially gave him a pass.

Knowing that courts will typically side with LEO's in traffic cases - he may or may not beat the ticket. A decent attorney could probably get the charge reduced.

I personally have never heard of the "swerving rolling roadblock technique". I've only seen it done on large multi-lanes using multiple cars.

The lesson to be learned here I guess - is LEO's with flashing lights - slow down and let him get in well in front of you...

Rick