A Utah Highway Patrol stopped a wrong-way driver by using his cruiser to ram the other vehicle head on last week.
The crash happened at about 3 p.m. Tuesday after Sgt. Chad McCoy had finished his shift in Salt Lake County and was heading into Tooele County along Interstate 80 near Lake Point, the Deseret News reports. That's when he spotted unusual behavior by his fellow drivers.
"I didn’t hear anything on the radio at that time,” McCoy said Thursday, according to KTSU. “I just noticed cars moving to the right and then a truck facing the wrong direction. And then I realized it’s actually traveling at a pretty high rate of speed.”
McCoy response was to reduce his speed to around 15 mph. His dashboard camera then captured him maneuvering his cruiser into the path of the wrong-way truck.
"Quickly I saw they weren't pulling over/stopping," he said, according to the News. "So I just tried to get the best angle that I could to try and stop him."
McCoy and the pickup's driver were taken to hospital for precautionary reasons. Although still sore, McCoy said he expects to be back on duty this week.
"We often talk about playing the 'What if?' game," he said. "What if this or that were to happen to you? Because we know in those situations where we only have seconds to act, we don't have time to think things through.
"So I think a lot of the preparation happens before the moment that it happens," he added. "So in those few seconds it's just more of a reflex than a long thought process."
The trooper has been lauded for his actions, including receiving praise in a tweet from Gov. Spencer Cox last week.
Col. Michael Rapich, head of the Utah Highway Patrol, continued with the praise on Thursday.
"We're incredibly proud of him," said Col. Michael Rapich, who leads the Utah Highway Patrol. "We're incredible grateful he's OK and wasn't hurt. And we're grateful no one else was hurt as a result of this incident."
The Tooele County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident.
