Having your car stall out while you’re driving on the interstate or even a surface street is a sickening feeling. While panic can set in, what you do with the last of your vehicle’s momentum can decide between your getting into a horrific crash or just waiting for a tow truck.
Who’s at fault in this interstate accident?
Footage from Minneapolis shows how two drivers made poor choices which resulted in a multi-car collision all because of a stalled-out vehicle on Interstate 94. While two people reportedly suffered minor injuries, the crash could have been so much worse.
A traffic camera captures the moment an SUV stalls out in what appears to be the lane next to the fast lane. It’s at night and the vehicle just stops in the lane of travel after slow rolling for a bit.
What we immediately noticed is the vehicle doesn’t appear to have its emergency flashers on. The video’s fuzzy, but we’re pretty sure we’d see those amber lights turning off and on.
So already the driver made two mistakes. The first is not activating the emergency lights. The second is not attempting to pull off onto the shoulder completely. Instead of using the last of the car’s momentum to get out of any lanes of travel, the driver just stops in the lane they were driving a moment before.
That sets up the mistake made by a second driver. Other drivers see the disabled vehicle and successfully navigate around it, one clearly slowing down and making a sharp lane transition to avoid a collision.
But one driver seems to not see the stopped vehicle, plowing right into the back end of it. The collision sends both cars spinning, the second one hitting a third car. Was the other driver not paying attention? Were they distracted? Was the lack of flashers why they didn’t realize the SUV was stopped? We don’t know, but as a driver you have to be ready for unexpected situations like this.