traffic problem that appeared to be created by 2 police cars

[vontar]

traffic problem that appeared to be created by 2 police cars. I don't know what to make of this, but I was not happy being in middle of it.

In my opinion were causing a Hazard on the interstate.

I am not going to give an exact location and I don't know if they were City or County. I think one of each.

I was going North Bound on I75. I had just passed an one exit and the next exit would be several miles. Suddenly traffic started backing up. I was like O there has probably been an accident. Traffic went down to 10 MPH. for about 2 miles.

I am telling you, before traffic was flowing smooth, no signs of trouble Then we saw the problem. Right in the middle of the interstate was 2 LE Cars with their Emergency light on. Once turned Broadway from the south side to the North bound lane and the other point north. So traffic was slowing down and trying to give them room.

Turns out they were just sitting there, no accident or anything. One I am glad there was no accident but what they caused was a clumping of traffic that was backing up at least 1 or 2 miles. They were not trying to pull out or anything.

I mean if they had a legit reason for being there, it was not clear, this is part of the reason I am not posting a location. We did not see any wreaked cars, or any other vehicles off to the side of the road.

I had concerns that it was going to cause that fast interstate traffic coming up behind to re end the slow cars up front that could not get out of the way.

Before everyone says it was the other drivers fault, I believe the drivers were trying to Obey the law, under the [h=1]Move Over Law that TN passed. So by them having their lights on they created a problem forcing everyone to try to obey that law and thus created a traffic hazard.

Move Over Law

[/h]

[Guest bkelm18]

Well, at least I'm glad to see people using the "Move Over" law. I do it if possible, but most people I see just zoom on past without changing lanes. I had to fix a flat on the side of a fairly busy interstate once. I was scared to death the entire time. People start rubber-necking at 80 MPH and don't pay attention to the road ahead.

[DaveTN]

Two cops were in the center median with their overheads on, you don’t know who they were, what they were doing, or whether there had been any kind of accident or incident prior to your arrival.

What do you want to know?

[vontar]

Two cops were in the center median with their overheads on, you don’t know who they were, what they were doing, or whether there had been any kind of accident or incident prior to your arrival.

What do you want to know?

Allot has happened since yesterday and this drive(another post coming). I wasn't exactly taking notes or video. So I don't want to name one city or county over another or say both were the same. In short, I am trying not to bash to hard only describe what I saw and give the general events. I believe it was one county and one city unit though. I know exactly were they were. I did not see any sign of an accident that may have occurred which of course is not to say a rapid response team had not cleaned it up with nascar pit crew efficiency and left the 2 officers behind doing paper work.

As soon as we got past the 2 cars the interstate was wide open again and traffic resumed normal flow.

The location was Just north of Lake City at the Emergency turn around between the abandon rest area or weight station and they had the traffic backed up to the Lake city On ramp. Had I seen the back up about 15 seconds quicker I would have used the exit at Lake city and drove to Lafollete on the old road. I saw cars coming up the On ramp to the interstate that saw the back up turn around and go back to Lake city.

My opinion is they were trying to make sure traffic was not speeding but they should not have had their lights on, just the sight of their cars would have been enough.

[DaveTN]

My opinion is they were trying to make sure traffic was not speeding but they should not have had their lights on, just the sight of their cars would have been enough.

So you think two patrol vehicles from different departments decided to pull into the median and turn their lights on….. Just to make sure traffic wasn’t speeding?

I think the obvious is more likely.

[Dolomite_supafly]

There is something LE does from time to time when the road crews are working and it does involve various jurisdictions if it involves more than one county. They perform what they call rolling roadblocks. That is the officers will pull out with their lights on then slow down to 30 or 40 miles and hour. This reduction in speed gives the road crews some time to work on the roads without cars wizzing by at 85 miles per hour.

Perhaps they were getting ready for a rolling road block or perhaps they had just pulled off into the median to allow traffic to resume after a rolling roadblock.

Speaking as a prior LE there is one thing you don't want to do. Bring uneeded attention to yourself and lights are like a beacon for all the haters to call dispatch to complain if they don't see something going on. Also, most jurisdictions don't want their officers to run lights unless they have a reason and to beat that red light isn't one of them. The odds that a couple of officers from different jurisdictions were running lights just for kicks would be astronomical. They had a reason, either they just finished something or they were getting ready for something.

Dolomite

[Chadastrophic]

When I was in San Diego I entered the hwy just in front of a rolling road block, nice empty commute for 10 miles, as I hit the interchange there was a disabled car in an less than ideal spot. I'm sure as traffic caught up they never knew it was there.

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[TGO David]

Or... Or... just maybe these officers were giving everyone a courtesy check to make sure that we all knew that they were going to be sitting there watching our speed. Holiday weekend and all that.

I'd rather have a cop warn me than have a cop light them up and ticket me. Just saying.

[DRM]

I will admit, sometimes I find myself wishing officers would realize they can create a hazard too. It's not all of them - but I think some of them seem to lose sight of the fact that the rest of the drivers on the road can be heavily impacted for hours by what they feel is just a few minutes of their time sitting and filling out paperwork.