Back to the drivers, I wouldn't doubt that they realized their poor decision before they died, but poor choices are made (the cop speeding was certainly one of them) and they died. Two poor decisions resulted in death, this shouldn't be such a shocker. What about more surprising things in life like people making good decisions and dying as a result of them?
the only poor choice, was made by the officer. the driver of the car made no poor choice, only failed to recognize how fast the cop was coming.
This is a chicken and egg argument here, and I think it's pretty obvious to 9/10 posting that the bigger wrong (blaitently breaking the speeding law vs. not seeing the cop car comming at well above posted speed limit) was commited by the officer. Would the accident happened if the car wouldn't of turned? or what about if the cop wasn't speeding. You can look at it either way. Bottom line is the cop car was far enough away from the intersection when the car made the turn to easily avoid a collision if he wasn't going 90 something. cops know better than to do that kind of shit, but they do because they get away with it way too often.
Not really, the accident could have occurred without regard to the officers speed. The officer had the right of way, the teens cut in front of him. Unfortunately the speed that the officer was driving at was enough to be fatal for the teens, had he been going the speed limit it is very likely the impact would have been less fatal, if even at all.
look, i can argue till i'm blue in the face and it might not do any good. so if you continue to feel that the driver "pulled out infront of a vehicle that was going way over the speed limit, so it's the car making the turn's fault" then thats fine. maybe you're right. maybe not.
but i'm going to try to get you to understand where i'm comming from (which is probably a waste of my time). I don't know about you, but right now, I drive a bus for a living. Sure its only 15-20 hours a week, but thats a lot of seat time. Personally, the majority of the time when I make a left hand turn across oncomming traffic, I look to see how big of a hole there is. Not the closing speed of the closest car. I'm guessing the driver did too. The space between the intersection and the cop car would have been MORE than enough space to safely make the turn had the cop been going the speed limit. Now re-read until you at least comprehend what I'm saying. I didn't say re-read till you agree with me.
Now some information to support my theory of people not looking at speeds. Everyone in town thinks 40 foot, 37,000 lb busses are slow. Know how I know? On a DAILY basis, someone pulls out infront of me while I'm doing the speed limit. People think, "here comes a big bus, I bet it's going slow so I can beat it." They take it for granted that I must be slow because I'm a big vehicle. Of course I have to slow down to keep from hitting them, but I'm willing to bet they do not take the time to accurately assess the bus' true speed before pulling out. This is what happened to the driver of the car. They saw they had plenty of room to make the turn for the space given and for the oncoming car traveling at a resonable speed. So they proceded to make the turn, oblivious to the fact that the cop was going over 90 without lights and sirens. You want to blame the teens driving? Go ahead, all they did was take something for granted. The fact is that the cop was speeding like hell, and didn't have lights and sirens on to alert others of his speed. If they had been on, we woudln't even have this thread. cop is at fault, end-of-story
Its not that I don't understand where any of you guys are coming from, I do. But at least when I drive on the street, I am not really so much worried about myself causing an accident as I am worried about some dumbass, texting while driving, doing makeup, driving too fast and not paying attention etc running into me.
Its kind of funny, last night, not even 25 minutes after my last post driving to a friends place I nearly t boned a guy in a jeep. I was cruising through the intersection about 5-10mph over the speed limit, as I entered the intersection the light turned yellow, at this point there is a white jeep about 150 ft out of the intersection, it didn't even occur to me that someone would try to make this turn, but without fail, this guy gave it a try, and turned into my lane, I had to turn into his to miss him (keep in mind that this is all happening outside of the intersection about 30 feet) anyways he hits the raised island where the street lamps are narrowly missing the post and pitches the jeep onto two wheels.
Life is funny like that.