Here’s some video you’ll probably be seeing/hearing about a lot this weekend, included in a CNN News report about the Dallas police officer who dickishly prevented NFL player Ryan Moats from seeing his mother-in-law in the moments before her death.
As you’ll see in the report, the officer has been chastised loudly and publicly by his police superiors and placed on leave pending an investigation, while the officer maintains he did everything by the book. Do life-or-death concerns trump legal concerns? Are flashing hazard lights a get-out-off-running-red-lights-free pass? Does none of this matter because the officer was clearly such a butthole? Who knows, but thanks for the heads-up, Towleroad.
Sure the cop was a dick, but as some people mentioned already, running a stop light in this situation didn’t save (almost) any time. The same with the stop sign. In fact ultimately it cost the guy running those time that he could have spent with his dying mother in law.
Just because your relative is dying doesn’t give you a right to endanger everyone else in your vicinity by reckless driving. In fact I would say that being in a frazzled emotional state you *shouldn’t* be driving and probably should have taken a cab. The mother in law wasn’t in the car, so it wasn’t really a life and death situation, but even if it was it still doesn’t give one the right to endanger anyone else.
Blindly following rules in every situation is obviously not good, but if you break the rules you better have a deeply justified reasons for why you are doing it.
she may have been “just” his mother in law, but i am struck by how everyone seems to think it’s no big deal that he was denied the chance to say goodbye to a family member before she died, that he wasn’t able to support his wife at the moment she lost her mother. if that’s not a life and death situation, i don’t understand what is.
have you ever sat at a red light in the middle of the night and been annoyed because no one is coming but the light doesn’t change and you just wait…..can you honestly tell me that if you were in that situation and you were rushing to see a dying family member in the hospital, that you wouldn’t think it was worth it to run that red light?
If Moat had followed all the traffic rules scrupulously and in doing so caused his wife to miss being at her mother’s side during said mother’s last moments his life would have been worthless. She would have had him for the wake.