I’m not sure whether I want to make this a poll or not. I guess I’ll just leave it freeform.
I’m curious as to how many of you have been involved in a highway patrol traffic break at its inception. On my way home the other night, I had one started right in front of me, and what amazed me is how many people seemed to have no clue what the officer was doing. Everytime he’d swerve to one side of the road, one or two drivers on the other side would seem to say, “Oh, I guess I’m free and clear now!” and try to zoom past him. :smack:
I don’t remember learning about traffic breaks before I started driving, but the first time I encountered one, it struck me as fairly obvious that the officer was trying to keep traffic behind him.
Have you seen this happen, and did you know what was going on?
Sorry for the poor phrasing of the OP here; maybe someone else can do a better job of summing this up coherently.
Been in 'em and did what I could to assist in their creation by putting my 4-ways on and waving between two lanes. (I’ll save the five-lane sweeps for the guys with all of the blinky lights!)
Yes, once, he started it right in front of me. I was in the lane next to the carpool lane. I was in the lane next to the carpool lane. All of a sudden he put on his lights and swerved into the carpool lane, right after a guy went buy relatively fast. I thought that he was going to pull the other driver over, so I was very suprised when he came right back into my lane. I figured out what was happening pretty quickly after that.
This was on the 405 just south of the 605 in Long Beach where there are 7 lanes total. It took at least 0.25 mile to get all the traffic stopped. He ran the break to remove half a tire that was in the center lane. An interesting experience.
I’ve been in several and I can’t recall anyone trying to pass the patrol car, it becomes pretty obvious, very quickly, what’s the officer is doing. I always turn on my 4 ways.
Once or twice. The last time it was more obvious because there were two squad cars. It turned out that that there was someone who had climbed outside the railing on an overpass. I never found out how that ended up, though.
No, never, and I’d be very confused if a police car started acting in the way described in this thread. I’m rather glad I read it, actually, so now if it ever happens (which it will, now that I’m aware of it) at least now I’ll know what’s going on.
I’m going to briefly side-track my own thread and profess ignorance because two people have now used the term “4 ways” to refer to, I assume, their hazard lights. I’ve never heard this term before!
In the one I experienced last night, the officer never ended up completely stopping traffic. I guess he never found what he was looking for. But the last time I was involved in one, there was a fender in the middle of the freeway. The officer stopped, picked it up and threw it into the his car, and then took off. Having had my car damaged by foreign object in the roadway before, I was really appreciative of that particular break.
I’ve been in traffic breaks a couple of times. The folks who weren’t getting it were probably just random assholes. I’ve seen people who don’t seem to get that you pull over when an ambulance is coming as opposed to trying to race it. I’ve been in situations where the entire freeway is stopped and a couple people think they’re going to get through by driving on the left shoulder. There’s being confused at first until you figure it out, and then there’s just being a jerk.
I wonder if they don’t do them everywhere. Two things:
I’ve never heard of one
AND
I saw a scenario just two weeks ago that totally would have called for it ( big metal shelving in the middle of the interstate), and the officer handled it quite differently. . .more in a way like “what the fuck is he doing?” He was going slow. He had his lights on, but wasn’t concerned at all that people were passing him. I was still behind him when he got to the debris, and a guy in a pickup that had been following him, ran out, grabbed the debris and (presumably) loaded it onto his truck. I had driven by.
One started in front of me recently. A couple of people were hesitant, but most of us slowed right down. He slowed the traffic gradually.
It was a dead animal that he stopped for, and it was between two lanes. He came out of his car putting on rubber gloves and waved the unblocked lane through. I was in that lane and scooted.
The first one I saw was as a kid, so by the time I was driving, I knew what the process was. Didn’t know the name for it until today, though. You’d think they’d teach it in driver’s ed, but I don’t remember it from there.
If the officer already knew exactly where the debris was, he probably didn’t feel a need to run a full break (although that still probably would have been safer). I had been driving for nearly 10 years before I saw one for the first time, so who knows?
This is my answer exactly. I have never heard of this before in my life, much less witnessed it. Is it possible this is more common in some regions than in others?
Quite often they will have either another officer ahead, or a Freeway service patrol truck that removes the debris. That way traffic never has to stop completely. Also they sometimes run traffic breaks to allow a tow truck to remove a car from the center divider.
I didn’t know what a traffic break was until I saw it, and I’ve only seen a couple in my entire life. I was driving for 10, maybe 20 years before I saw the first one. I didn’t know what was going on at first, but I figured it out. It seemed pretty obvious at the time that by swerving back and forth and slowing down, the officer wasn’t inviting us to pass him.
I’ve been behind a few. Twice, it was just to slow traffic down to clear an accident ahead. The other was a complete stop for a Presidential (or VP, can’t remember exactly) motorcade on the other side of the freeway. Another was for a funeral motorcade for a police officer that was traveling to the SF Bay Area from southern California. The motorcades were impressive, although I’m not sure why they needed to have traffic stopped on the other side of the freeway.
All the time. Driving as much as I did for a living way back when, I saw them maybe once a week. Now, not so often. Most people catch on fairly quickly, but there’s always some moron who needs to be whacked with a clue-by-four.