Motorhome driver sentenced in fatal accident

rockhillmanor wrote:
Report states this:

Petrina had responded to the scene and

parked his squad car behind a TDOT truck

. Both vehicles had their lights flashing and there were

orange cones behind

the cruiser and the truck.

According to police, Diver tried to go

between the police car and the TDOT truck

in his large motor home.

Traveling in the 'same' direction that 2 vehicles are parked one behind the other.....
Just HOW do you drive 'between' the two?
:H
And this picture shows THIS? Cop car is NOT parked behind the IDOT truck.



IMHO = An officers police report perhaps emotional/angered involving a fellow fallen officer that just doesn't add up.

Highway policy is In an emergency lane closure the idot truck should be in the first lane and the cop in the second. You don't leave the open space as is shown in this picture. But then again the police report states he was parked 'behind' the Idot truck because where he really parked the squad was incorrect emergency policy.

Just curious here... how do you know that the officer didn't move his vehicle between when this picture was taken and the collision occurred?

Its fairly easy to determine where vehicles were based upon physical evidence. Either way, the driver of the motorhome has an obligation to slow down and interpret the road conditions. Treating the roadway and obstructions like a slalom course isn't the correct way to interpret conditions...

By the way... what exactly is "emergency policy" and what does that have to do with placement of vehicles on the scene? I worked patrol for 12 years and have had to close roadways thousands of times in my career. You do the best you can with the resources that you have. I've had to shut down 4 lane highways with nothing more than a marked cruiser and flares.

Trust me when I tell you that no matter how you close a road, some idiot will try to get through.

We had a major storm that completely flooded a major north/south artery in my district. We closed the road using marked police cruisers and DOT trucks with sign boards. We had cones and traffic barrels. We had signs marking the road was closed, do not enter, etc. Some genius decided that all those warnings didn't apply to him and tried to go through the scene. He was stopped and turned around. His solution was to turn off his lights and go the WRONG way (northbound in the southbound lanes) into the flood waters. His car became disabled. Unfortunately for him, he was swept away in the flood waters and died.

The point is that there is no way to stop a dummy from doing something dumb. The driver of this motorhome did something dumb. It sounds like hundreds, if not thousands, of other motorists on that roadway that day were able to figure out the obstruction and safely navigate around it. The driver of this motorhome didn't.