BOUNTIFUL, Utah — When you work the roads, putting on that highlighter yellow vest means one thing:
“Every day is a day that you could possibly get hit,” said Brad Aven with the Utah Department of Transportation's Incident Management Team.
And Monday morning was a reminder of just that after a car ran into a UDOT truck on I-15 in Bountiful.
Aven was helping a driver who had pulled over on the side of the road after running out of gas, and with the battery gone kaput.
He went to grab a jump pack for the driver, but disaster struck — literally.
“I was about to put it on her car and I heard a big explosion, and from that explosion I looked up and saw my truck had been hit and the car was over in the middle of the freeway,” Aven recalled.
Fortunately, everyone was unharmed.
Accidents like these may not happen every day, but they occur enough to make an impression. And they don’t always have a happy ending, as Aven can attest to from an incident in 2021.
“Same situation except I was changing a tire. I had gotten back in my truck and got rear-ended at 71 miles an hour and moved an 18,000-pound truck 60 feet, in park. It killed both the driver and the passenger,” he said. “They’re designed for hitting; they're designed to get hit. If it would’ve been a trooper car or the motorist that I was helping... this conversation would be a lot different. There would possibly be a fatal if it wasn’t for my truck.”
You’ve heard it once, and you’ll hear it again: give space to emergency responders on the shoulder.
“If you see a police officer or an emergency vehicle or a tow truck on the side of the road with flashing lights, you do need to slow down at the very least, if not move over,” said Lt. Zach Randall with Utah Highway Patrol. “If it’s unsafe for you to move over, if the lane next to you is occupied or it’s unsafe for you to move over, at the very least slow down.”
And if you’re the person who has to pull over?
“Remain in your vehicle,” Randall advised. “If you have any emergency that requires you to pull over on the side of the roadway, the safest place for you is to stay inside of your vehicle, not out.”
It's for your own safety and everyone around you.
“Our job is to get you guys moving, so that you guys are not going to be the person that’s going to get hit on the shoulder,” said Aven. “It prevents you guys from getting hit. If it was me, I would rather drive off the freeway with a flat tire than get hit from a car.”
DRIVEN TO CHANGE
