Car crashes into vehicle undergoing tire change - GIF

[Altair]

Car crashes into vehicle undergoing tire change.




Previously:

Car rear-ends pickup while man is sitting on tailgate - GIF
Man walks away unscathed in three-car crash - GIF
Runaway tire sends car airborne - GIF
Man deflects runaway tire - GIF
Out of control vehicle barrels toward jogger - GIF

[Frank S]

Why would the fool stop in the middle of the traffic lane to change his tire instead of driving to one side of the road out of traffic and put out warning triangles. You are better off driving on a flat even if you ruin the rim to get to a safe place to pull off than creating a hazard to yourself and other drivers.

[RetiredFAE]

Highway 17 in the Silicon Valley one Friday night, about 5 PM, wall to wall traffic, Mercedes 600 is stopped in the middle lane, gentleman from Taiwan is digging the jack and spare out of the trunk to change a flat.

I pull up behind him, turn on the reds and blues, carefully get out and ask him what he thinks he is doing.

Changing flat tire is the response.

I tell him to pull off to the side of the road, there is a wide spot for that about 200 feet ahead, I will block traffic for him.

He refuses, says it will ruin his expensive rim.

Tell him move it or I will have it towed and take him to jail.

He tells me to go do something impossible to myself, he is not going to ruin a $2,000 rim.

I put him in the back of the patrol car, toss the spare and jack back in the trunk, tow truck tows it to the impound lot, he goes to lockup.

3 days later, about the same time of day, but lighter traffic, it's moving at close to the 70 MPH speed limit, a mile or so further up the road, there he is again, same deal, different tire, but same lane, he's again dug out the jack and tire, starting to take the lug nuts off.

I work my way through traffic to deal with him, but get there too late, get there just in time to see an inattentive driver launches him into the stratosphere, graveyard dead right there.

Proof the gene pool is self-cleaning.

[heinjh]

I work my way through traffic to deal with him, but get there too late, get there just in time to see an inattentive driver launches him into the stratosphere, graveyard dead right there.

Proof the gene pool is self-cleaning.

Well - that was at least one court date you didn't have to attend...

[Hans Pearson]

"Proof the gene pool is self-cleaning". I love that statement.
This guy was worried about his rims, perhaps he should have paid more attention to his tyres.

[RetiredFAE]

Saved me a court date that's for sure. At least for the arrest of him, but not for the arrest of the woman putting on makeup and driving with her knees who hit and killed him, had to go to court on that one.

She got convicted of involuntary manslaughter and got 4 years for it.

She was also driving on a suspended license, because she had racked up so many tickets for doing that same thing, driving with her knees while putting on makeup or eating. And she had a ton of tickets for tossing lit cigarettes out on the road, one of which started a small brush fire on an on ramp onto that same highway 17. That netted her tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Those were all state offenses, I was a Federal Agent at the time (many folks seem to believe we cannot enforce state laws or traffic laws if we see them broken, but we can) and when I identified myself and arrested her for the hit and run of the man she killed (she only went on down the highway about half a mile before her car died) she told me I couldn't arrest her as I wasn't a sheriff and we were on a California highway, and she was a "free traveling person and a sovereign citizen", and as such the laws of the United States didn't apply to her, and only an elected sheriff could arrest her!

I asked her if the laws didn't apply to her, then why was it she said only a duly elected sheriff could arrest her? Got a stream of profanity for that one, and she quoted a bunch of "US Statutes" that she made up on the spot to back up her claim.

As I put her in cuffs in front of witnesses, she started threatening to kill me, then she took a swing at me and kicked me in the shins. So, in addition to the state charges, she was charged with a couple of federal felonies, terroristic death threats to a protected person, and battery on same, those netted her a 20 year to life sentence in the Federal Penitentiary.

She was 22 at the time, and is still in the Federal Pen, she can't seem to behave there. Not likely she will ever be released, and if she is, CA still has her for another 4 years in their prison system.


As for the gent who got launched, his tires were all full of nails, none spilled on the highway, somewhere else he ran over a bunch of roofing nails. Just took a bit of time apparently to cause the two flats. The other two would have suffered the same fate eventually, I think.

[Hoosiersmoker]

"Car crashes into vehicle undergoing tire change."

Saved him the trouble of changing the tire though!

[Hans Pearson]

Thanks for the above fascinating story.