I’ve been behind two just this past spring. Once for a wrecked semi that had caught fire (and the dry grass hillside behind it caught spectacularly). The second time seemed to be for no reason at all - it looked like he pulled over into the aftermath of an accident to chat with other officers. He must have been late to the party.
It was pretty obvious to me what CHP was trying to achieve, but other people weren’t so sure and tried to race by. Either that or they were idiots (who the hell tries to blow by CHP?)
Seems like a good number of the posters who have experienced these things are from California. I’m from New Jersey and neither heard of nor encountered a traffic break. Perhaps it is regional difference as some have suggested…?
The safest and most effective methods for doing something like this are going to depend on local driving styles, and rules. I’ve seen one British police car holding two lanes of traffic down to about 40, but without any need to change lanes, because of the uniformly-understood ‘overtake on the right’ principle. All he needed to do was stay in that lane with lights on and slow down. (Never saw the reason for this, I turned off the road before then.)
California here – seen it many times. A little confused at first, but, like others so far, figured it out pretty quickly. A pretty basic rule is that you don’t pass the CHP.
Yes, but your average non-asshole doesn’t follow the thought: “Hmmm…I wonder what’s going on?” with “I think I’ll try to whiz by this police car that’s swerving in front of me with its lights on.” Like Jayrot and I and everyone else, you figure it out pretty quick.
No, you’re right, the ones overtaking the cop probably knew exactly what was going on, and took a gamble that the policeman driving the roadblock car wasn’t going to abandon it to chase them. And that they probably wouldn’t be able to call on colleagues, because they’ll also probably be busy dealing with whatever incident is causing all of this.
I saw/experienced a traffic break once, and I thought it was just to slow down the speed of traffic for no other reason than that the average speed was getting too high. Maybe something else was happening of which I was unaware. I’m also in SoCal.
A few years back on our local town-to-beach highway, I came up on what was apparently one as described in the OP: traffic stopped completely while an evac helicopter came down and landed on the highway to lift off an injured person.
I’m guessing it’s a CHP innovation and I can’t recall ever experiencing it outside California. It seems to be an effective tactic and could be used for any number of reasons. I’m surprised it’s use hasn’t spread to other parts of the U.S., or even other heavily trafficked countries.
The asshole’s car might be faster than a CHP Ford, or a CHP motorcycle, but I got $5 that says it can’t outrun Motorola. if the cop gets his license number, he can radio for another officer. There is always another officer in So Cal.
I’ve seen two in Colorado in the mid to late '80s. In one case it was for jack-knifed bullshipper on westbound I-70 west of Denver, and the other on northbound I-25 for a fog bank south of Fort Collins. It was very obvious what the cop wanted, but I didn’t know it had a name until this thread.
I’ve seen it on highway 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento, especially the area right before you get to Fairfield. People tend to drive pretty fast on 80, and the CHP is basically trying to get everyone to slow the hell down without pulling everyone over.
We were driving on the 400 (6 or 8 lanes at that point) from Barrie back to Toronto, and the road was really full. We saw someone speed up the shoulder lane and were commenting what a jerk he was when we noticed it was a cop car, a Toronto cop car (we weren’t in Toronto) that was one of those all-blue ones, with the markings that only show up in the light. Then we noticed another similar cop coming up behind us, he was flashing his lights (no siren) behind people to get them to move over. Just after he passed us, all the traffic stopped dead.
Eventually we inched forward and when we got to the front we saw this scene: a pick-up truck was pulled over on the left-hand lane, the driver had his hands up (one arm out the window). Three cop cars were stopped around him (one in front) and he was surrounded by cops pointing GUNS at him. This is Canada, so I don’t see a lot of guns! Especially on the HIGHWAY!
It was crazy. Never seen anything like it before or since.
