KALAMAZOO, Mich. — After 11 years working as a tow truck driver, Ben Moore answered a call on Oct. 1 that would change his life forever.
Moore began his career in West Michigan before moving to Iowa, and eventually landed in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
While responding to a broken down tractor trailer along I-24, Moore was hit by a car, breaking both of his legs and his right hand.
“I’m lucky. I should be dead without a doubt in my mind right now,” Moore said. “There is zero reason that makes sense why a 3500-pound car, why I should stand any chance to walk away.”
Dashcam caught the horrific moment of impact, and while it’s hard to watch, Moore is sharing his story to show the hard truth and real threat many face while working on the roads.
“People do not care. Unless it’s somebody like a relative to them or somebody that they actually have an emotional tie to, people don’t care,” Moore said. “It’s just an obstacle in their way. I’m just another traffic cone in their way. How many traffic cones do you see laying in the ditches that are hit?”
Speaking with News Channel 3 from his hospital bed, nearly two weeks after the crash, Moore said circumstances like this are why “Slow Down and Move Over” laws exist across the country.
In Tennessee, the law requires people to move over into an adjacent lane of traffic when safe to do so, or slow down when approaching emergency vehicles, including recovery vehicles (tow trucks), highway maintenance vehicles, solid waste vehicles, or utility service vehicles.
A sentiment that is echoed in Michigan’s Move Over Law.
“That law is designed to make it where you can have time to react and not hit us,” Moore said. “People just aren’t paying attention and it’s costing lives, even their own.”
Moore now has a long road to recovery: hours of daily therapy, more surgeries, and learning to stand and walk again.
But - it’s a road Moore said he’s thankful to travel, knowing not everyone gets the chance to.
“I didn’t ask for it but it’s an obligation to speak up for the men and women that don’t get to make it home,” he said.
People like Keagan Spencer, a tow truck driver from Hastings who was killed on M-6 in 2023 while trying to save a dog in the median.
Ever since, Spencer’s family has been fighting for more protections for drivers by efforting legislation in Lansing and Washington D.C. to allow tow trucks to operate with blue lights like police have.
“That’s what’s going to make everybody safer,” Moore said. “I really want people to start thinking about everybody that’s working on the roads as if it was one of their family members.”