Amazing...both officers survived

I just received these pics and found it so amazing that I had to post it for others to see. This car was driven by two close friends and co-workers who were responding to a vehicle theft in progress. The vehicle left the roadway at close to 70 mph and struck a very large tree.

The driver was badly hurt however survived and should return to work after surgeries and healing of badly broken legs. The passenger was out of work for about 3 weeks with stitches and has already returned to full duty.

This is a credit to our amazing medics in Bham as well as very quick response from other officers on duty. It is also a credit to modern vehicles and these patrol cars can really take a beating and allow officers to live to patrol another day. You really had to see this in person to see how the car was almost cut in half. It struck just in front of the drivers door and crushed the driver into about a 5 inch space. The biggest factor in this accident was that the car was a Supervisors car and as such did not have a shield between the front and back seats (not designed for prisoner transport) If it would have had a shield both officers would most likely have not survived.

I hope this will help any current or future officers we have here to really be cautious when responding to any call.

That looks like a very bad accident, but it is good that neither occupant was injured permanently.
A few times I have seen police cars do things on the highway that seemed pretty dangerous to me. Once a fairly bad accident happened maybe a quarter mile in front of me. All of the cars quickly slowed down, and basically waited in pretty much the same place for at least a half hour. Soon, the police came, and drove past the cars on the left, in between them and the highway divider. However, they were easily going 60+ MPH, with little more than a few feet of space on each side. I would think this would be very dangerous, as something like a wet patch on the road could cause the driver to lose control, and plow into the stopped cars. I realize that there wasn't any way to get to the accident except by passing the cars on the left side, but it still seemed to me like it wasn't the safest thing to do.

There was a crash a few years ago in California where a guy was driving a Ferrari Enzo (basically the fastest production Ferrari) at 160 MPH on the Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently the bottom of the car hit a bump, causing the car to go airborne and hit a telephone pole, splitting the car clean in half (with the front of the car separating from the back). Miraculously, the driver survived, and his only injury was a a bloody lip.
Of course, it turned out that he had stolen the Ferrari...

I forgot the actual percentage Robo on how many officers are killed from traffic accidents.

However, the leading cause of on-duty death is traffic accidents.

The academy in Nashville has taken this into consideration and has some pretty strict rules on the driving test.

If you knock over two many cones or don't finish in time twice, your out.

To top off that and the classes on driving, we did 4 hours in house on policy and the majority of the 4 hours was safety. Then 8 hours "in house" in a parking lot remaking the traffic test in Nashville to practice over and over.

Hopefully Bham uses it's resources similarly.

It's amazing anyone survived that.

I know that police cars typically get beefed up engines, transmissions & drivetrain components.
I've always wondered if they also had stronger occupant areas. Do they?

There are only a few small differences between the patrol versions vs the civilian version. The patrol version has a beefed up electrical system to handle all of the extra lights and various coolers for the fluids (oil,tranny) The interior is the same with the exception of a divider installed between the front and rear for transport of prisoners. It really does not help much in a collision however it could help as a roll bar I guess as it goes all the way across the interior roof.

I believe some of the older patrol packages disabled the air bags however the new ones do not. There was a trend for a while where the suspects would reverse and ram the patrol car setting off the air bags making it hard for the officer to continue the pursuit.

I am not sure how others feel about Ford products however our cars run 24 hours a day and as you can imagine are driven very hard. Most are replaced at about 80k however for them to get to that under this type usage says alot about their construction. I have found the biggest factor for officer injury in a collision is the radio, radar and computer mounts between the front seats. Most officers will get pushed up against all the interior add ons and this is what causes the breaks and cuts to your body.

I often visit a web site called www.odmp.org where I keep up with all of the duty related deaths across the nation. You can look on there and break down each incident by type of event and the stats are incredible for accidents killing officers....followed by heart attacks (imagine that) Many more are killed yearly by vehicle collisions rather than gunfire and the stats on that site really woke me up as to my personal driving on duty.

The good news is my dept. reacted very well to the officers needs during this event. They arranged for a full time nurse after he was released and even bought special furniture to help the officer cope without the use of both legs. Very classy indeed and something that would not have happened a few years back...(new Chief now very different) I spoke with him last Thursday and he may be back to light duty within 6 months and full duty within a year.

Black Rose said:

It's amazing anyone survived that.

I know that police cars typically get beefed up engines, transmissions & drivetrain components.
I've always wondered if they also had stronger occupant areas. Do they?

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There is no difference in the passenger compartment on Police cars. Other than they are jammed with equipment. I was always amazed at how long our crown vic's lasted. Like Robo's agency, the cars in my old agency ran 24/7 and our beats were huge. It was not uncommon to put 300 miles a night on them on a busy night.

We generally deadlined the cars somewhere around 250k miles.

We have rollovers on a regular basis--once a month at my station probably. Locally, I lost one coworker on duty who was a documented horrible driver. Not a bad person, but incompetent behind the wheel and would have been safer working in an office. Lost another off duty.

On my most recent code 3 response to the supervisor under attack, I really made an effort to think about my driving. My seatbelt was on, I used all the lights, wig-wags and siren with air horn to clear intersections. I consciously told myself to keep it under control.

Cops are risk takers, often young males, and trying to get them to drive safely, let alone slowly, is difficult.