Video is worth watching at the link. Studs would have prevented it...

https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/V...tragedy-on-Seward-Highway-566540181.html

VIDEO: Anchorage tow truck driver, APD officer narrowly avoid out of control car on Seward Highway

A car speeding out of control at Mile 104 of the Seward Highway narrowly missed a tow truck driver assisting a disabled vehicle on Christmas Day (From Anchorage Police Department)
By KTUU News | Posted: Sat 2:18 PM, Dec 28, 2019 | Updated: Sat 2:44 PM, Dec 28, 2019

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) — A tow truck driver and an APD officer helping a disabled vehicle on the side of the Seward Highway narrowly avoided tragedy on Christmas Day as a car speeding around an icy curve lost control.

According to a Facebook post by APD, a local tow truck driver and an APD officer were assisting a vehicle in distress in a pull-out at Mile 104 of the Seward Highway on Christmas Day.

Dashcam video from APD shows the tow truck driver kneeling down to examine the driver's side of the disabled vehicle shortly after the APD officer walks out of frame back toward his patrol car.

On the left-center of the screen, a white SUV can be seen approaching the curve in the Northbound lane at what appears to be a high rate of speed before losing traction.

The SUV begins drifting sideways, kicking up snow and debris as it crossed the center line over into the Southbound lane and the pullout where the disabled vehicle and APD patrol car sat.

The tow truck driver can be seen in the video popping his head up just as the SUV slides past him, showering him with snow.

"Had any tiny variable been slightly different in these 3 seconds, this could have been an incredibly tragic day," APD said in the Facebook post. "We're grateful that nobody was hurt."

APD says this should serve as a reminder for drivers to slow down, plan ahead, and exercise caution on the roads, especially in winter months when roads are covered in ice and snow.

"Your life and the lives of others depend on it," APD said.



Copyright 2019 KTUU. All Rights Reserved.

Speed appropriate for conditions would have helped too!

Years back I had a big firetruck that broke down on I-70 in Utah, The towtruck driver and I had hours to talk on the way to Provo and he pointed out a spot on a bridge. He said a Utah highway Patrol officer was stopped with a disabled vehicle and another car was coming at him so he jumped out of the way and off the bridge in the fog.

There was no comment about whether the guy was stopped later...

So would have good driving habits. Besides overdriving conditions there's the target fixation phenomena. And notice the front wheels remain straight, not countering the skid. New drivers should find an iced over empty parking lot and mess around a bit to get the feel of it - watch out for light poles.


Per wiki: Target fixation is an attentional phenomenon observed in humans in which an individual becomes so focused on an observed object (be it a target or hazard) that they inadvertently increase their risk of colliding with the object.

I have seen more than one bullet hole in large antlers...

The moron was driving way to fast for the conditions.
Idiot got to far to the right, then over corrected, initiating the death slide.
Studs wouldn't have made any difference.

Showing off for my daughter, whom he recently married, my son-in-law crunched the front of a '67 Cougar I restored and gave them. You gotta watch those poles.

LMFAO.....target fixation in the extreme.

That made the TV news around here but I forgot if it was a local station or on Fox news. All I could think of was that I bet that tow truck driver wishes he was wearing adult diapers. Thank God it missed him.

people in suv's, mostly women imo, think that because of 4x4 capabilities they're immune from driving safely in hazardous conditions.

See lots of flipped over suvs in the ditch in the PNW during winter driving months, and typically a woman standing buy the flipped over vehicle on her cell phone calling for service

Inches count 😮

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you on studs not doing anything different.

At a B&C Awards banquet/show in about '98 there were a couple new world record heads with holey antlers... and several others of unusual size...

Front wheel drive rigs get lots of them when they turn into the slide and the front tires suddenly catch a little traction and off they go into the ditch...

I drove the same highway, the same day as this incident perhaps an hour or less before it happened.

I was in an F-150 in 2wd, with Nokian Hakka 8’s (studded) and was driving 55 mph (the speed limit) with absolutely no trouble.

You were right except the first statement and the last.

Moving to Juneau AK after having lived in NW PA and at 7000' in AZ I was quite surprised to see the same thing on the main road there from Auke Bay to the City. One might think that folks that get that kind of weather all the time might have a clue, but no. Nearly every trip I saw a different SUV in the median or off the side.

AWD and anti lock brakes are not the supreme answer after all.

My tires slipped once, going up a slight incline, in a 1986 2wd Toyota PU................with studs.

Geno

Had a cop killed here about 20 years ago like that.
Sort of.

Working for a towing company, i was sitting in the office listening
to the Turnpike dispatch radio.

Cop headed to training event, came around a corner, hit ice,
And slid off the road. Landed right beside a car that had done same.
He called it in and requested plow trucks to work the road.

A couple minutes later the plow driver reports that another car
wrecked, and the cop was hurt, bad.

Radios went apeshit, everybody was called and reporting.

Tragic, he was one of the good guys, did a lot with kids.


But,
The narrative afterward was that he saw the wrecked car, and even
though he was on training duty, he stopped to rescue the Damsel.

Why lie? There wasn't even anything to cover up.
Other than his driving wasn't infallible. And it was ice!
Anything can happen to anybody on black ice.

Over steering to compensate causes more accidents than the
original skid.

How often do you see a car slid right off the road in a curve?
Usually, they are past the turn a bit.

That's were they landed after they over comped, and couldn't
catch the next skid.

Have been on a real skid pad multiple times.
Company I drove for had one, and I would take
students to it if in the neighborhood. I always signed
myself in and did it also.
Enough that they had a hard time spinning me out, but of course
They still could. Finally, they wouldn't let me do it anymore.
"This ain't F'n Disney" was the quote.

If you enjoy ripping around in a vehicle, an old cop car,
Bobtail semi, and a tractor-trailer on a skid pad are one
hell of a fun time.

This....

Been to that rodeo one night in a Ford Fiesta in northern Wisconsin in freezing slush. The light weight little thing got caught in a frozen rut. Countersteer while looking straight into the pasture that was on my left. Things snapped to the right and looking at some trees but now not quite so sideways. I don't remember how many back and forths happened before I got it slowed down and straight, seemed like a LOT. Pulled over to the shoulder to start myself breathing again.

Stupid, knew I was on the edge. Should've pulled over and let the semi and other vehicles go around. They were heavy enough to not get trapped by a slush rut.

I thought that was some pretty hotshit driving. Nice drift!

That's what I was thinking...
Did a good job staying in the groove all the way through the curve with the added bonus of spraying a couple of people. Had they hit a dry patch it wouldn't have ended well.

Last time I tried that stunt there was a coke delivery truck going in the opposite direction. I got back in my lane with a second to spare. Truck driver's eyes were as big as saucers.

Driving too fast for road conditions.

I agree with the 'slow down' slogan at the end of the video. The speed limit was designed for the roads in good conditions. When it's icy, no tire is going to make it as good as dry with summer tires. Just not going to happen.

Good post

I’m pretty sure you are attempting humor, but fail.

Tow driver would have been severely injured if not killed. Perhaps the cop too.

Driver had plain dumbass luck to not only avoid them, but also not have oncoming traffic like there often is on that 2- lane stretch.

Pretty good odds they were drunk driving like that.

Driving like that doesn't take being drunk- just being distracted or complacent; two things you can't afford when driving-especially in chitty conditions.

I did accident investigation and reconstruction exclusively for 8 years. My biggest killer was a distracted driver. I had my share of drunks and drugged drivers but the biggest common denominator was being distracted- usually by a passenger. Now it is with phones!

Just going by the the of year and the prevalence of DD in the police blotter reports, but agree with your point.

Multitasking. Yeah, right!

Multi ton deadly weapon is what it is, and members here do it all the time.

It’s like carrying got, safety off, finger on trigger while watching the stars when walking. Someone is gonna get hurt sometimes. Not always, so that makes it ok.

To my well trained eyes the driver was carrying too much speed into the corner, saw the tow truck and police car and tried to dump his speed too quickly. This started a skid and then an over correction that saved the original skid but carried him to the outside of the corner where he then held on for dear life. That tow driver was extremely lucky to be alive, and hopefully learned new vigilance in watching all directions of traffic.

Studded tires would have helped, but speed and a panic slow down was the cause. It’s surprising how many cars stay on the road during terrible conditions even without studs if they drive cautiously and don’t try to squeeze the last 5K from a set of summer tires.

It wouldn't surprise me if everyone involved needed to change their skivvies after that. Like others said, the SUV came in a bit hot and lost it coming into the curve. Talk about luck.

I've seen plenty of that, both living in the PNW but also the many years I lived in MN and traveled the entire upper Midwest from the UP of Michigan, Wis, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas....

I hated in the early 80s when GM et al started selling FWD cars, and Goodyear was selling those Tiempo all season tires...
Car salesmen and tire salesmen were telling people that those product would turn the roads into summer, their traction was so good.....yeah right up to the second they left the road in a big skid....hwy ditches and medians were filled with them every darn snow storm.....

With SUVs its worse in the PNW... people who live in the I 5 valleys, can drive to the snow, so they don't drive in it every day... plus a lot of them are told with 4 WD or AWD they don't need to buy winter tires... their vehicles traction will go thru anything...
right up to the moment they leave the road....

Way back in 78 after I got off active duty, I got a seasonal job at the Post Office and was assigned to the main one in Everett WA, I lived 20 miles south in north Seattle....I went to college in New England and learned to drive in snow spending 5 years up there as a college student...Worked New Years eve of 1978-79... from like 8 PM to 7 AM....there was a major snow dump that night...

one the way home, I 5 was a ghost town that morning....plows hadn't been out too much at 7 AM....so 30 mph on the way home, after putting some weight in the back of my old 68 Volvo Wagon...and having snow tires on the rear.. I drove home...I still remember that very clearly.. because it was bright sunshine, clear blue sky, and in that 20 miles there were exactly 25 vehicles in the median abandoned, most of them wrecked... all but one of those vehicles were 4 WD large pickups, Surburbans etc...

People over confident, and driving way to fast for conditions....and in fact, I've seen too much of that stuff in the PNW, where the weather gets bad, and many of these idiots actually speed up instead of slow down... just itching to try and be macho and see exactly how 'good' their 4 WD or AWD is in bad weather....just plain stupid....

Someone I knew lost control on an overpass, went through the guard rail and landed on the inside shoulder of the freeway below. He was shaken up but essentially unhurt. He got out of the car and was thinking about his miraculous luck when he was struck by another car.

The driver of the other car was so fixated by what she saw that she drove right into him. Left him a paraplegic for life.

That dude that almost got hit needs some lessons in situational awareness too.

Twas cruising down the highway in the right lane one day in sloppy weather like that when a county sheriff cruiser went flying by me in the left lane. Next thing I know there's mud and snow flying up from the median, the cruiser sucked down into the middle of it. I pull off onto the shoulder and stop parallel to the cruiser, roll down the window and ask the boys inside if they're all right. They said yes, I asked em if they needed the roll of toilet paper I carried in my truck for emergencies. They weren't happy, I drove off on and my way.

Just around the corner from the site is a pull-out on the left side (per the video perspective) and no turning lane. You are on it before you realize it is there and in heavy traffic it has caused more than a death or three. I know many folks have complained, written letters, done all sorts of things but the State DOT refuses to put up so much as a warning sign...

The scariest I have witnessed was when a Wyoming Hwy Department snowplow truck right in front of us did a couple of 360s down into the median on I-80 between Rock Springs and Rawlins. I was driving and my two passengers were Wyoming natives. When I expressed amazement, the guy riding shotgun just shrugged and said, "Well, it is the 19th of January."

Forgot to mention the perpetual skid marks in the south-bound lane there...

Wow, that was effing close. But yeah, the white punter panicked when it saw the po po. Wonder if there was a handicap tag hanging from the mirror.

I'll second the "go play in a safe parking lot." That's something my Dad and I would do even before I had my license. And I kept doing it, not to just cut cookies but to get the "feel." Few years later, after my folks split, Mom kept ditching her car. So, Mom and I went down to the mall, started slithering around. We'd been there about an hour when the cops showed up. They were shocked when Mom rolled down the window. Short conversation ensued, cops said, Okay, have a nice evening.

From that point on, Mom kept between the paint. She made some nice saves, too, kept herself out of a pile up that exploded in front of her one morning. So, good idea to practice.

Exactly! Studs don't do much, after the first few hundred miles they're gone, but the false confidence is still there.

Someone will eventually have to sue the DOT to get their attention. Documented negligence and inaction to a known safety risk should pay the rent for a law office willing to take a contingency case.

Cannot agree more...

Aluminum studs were available for a while and some even took the bait and used them. They wore down fast as you note, but tests showed they had significant affect right up until they started popping out. Steel, hardened steel, and fancy options were available the last time I looked.

Very true. I used many sets of tires loaded with those crappy studs and they did the job just fine before their predictably short lives (one winter) were over. They were on work vehicles that were driven very hard. I bought a set for my little 4wd Tacoma during this period and between the light weight and my driving them like I paid for them, I still had 50% of the studs after 50% of the tread was worn down @40k +/-. They’re dedicated winter mud tires and I still have them way after they should’ve been retired. I hesitated to add that knowing the odds of a new conversation starting about my needless risk taking.

Anyway, current studs are stronger and longer lasting. And the DO work extremely well in icy conditions. No, they’re not a replacement for skill and good judgment, but they’re a worthy investment (or seasonal insurance expense) that can pay for itself in an instant. Not even factoring in human life and safety, just calculating the expenses of vehicle damage makes studded tires a bargain compared to a totaled rig.