MAINE, USA — In just two days, three Maine State Police troopers saw their cruisers hit in separate incidents. Two of them involved drivers not moving over for stopped emergency vehicles, which is a law.
"The 'move over' law is to protect law enforcement, rescue, tow truck drivers, fire apparatus, that are on the side of the road with their emergency lights on," Corporal Doug Cropper with the Maine State Police said.
Officials like Cropper want to remind drivers that that law doesn't just apply to moving right, but also to the left.
"The number one rule is to move over, move into the next adjacent lane," Cropper said. "If you can't, you must slow down drastically and pass safely. We're still not seeing a lot of that either way, getting over or slowing down."
One of those incidents happened on the Maine Turnpike in Biddeford. There, a trooper stopped a driver who chose to pull over to the left, against the center median, instead of all the way over to the right shoulder.
"I'm not sure what the timeline is, whether it happened right away or he went up and talked to the driver and then got back into his car," Cropper said. "He was then struck by another driver from behind."
That trooper and the two drivers had serious injuries, but none were life-threatening.
Farther north in Lewiston, another trooper's cruiser was hit by an alleged drunk driver.
"I believe while he was running code with his lights and sirens going, he comes up on a vehicle that was swerving in its lane, and as he was trying to notice the swerving and he was trying to pass to go, that driver came into [the trooper's] lane and sideswiped him."
Cropper says a field sobriety test was given to the driver whose blood alcohol level was over the limit.
He stresses the importance of not driving under the influence.
"There are other mechanisms to get home, Uber, and all the other services to get you home safely and not take the chance of driving drunk, and not just crashing into a trooper but crashing into an innocent person and injuring or killing them," Cropper said.
The third incident happened in Gouldsboro.
A state trooper had gotten back into his cruiser after a traffic stop and was sideswiped by a vehicle driven by an elderly man who police say has several complaints against him for bad driving.