cop charged with misdemeanor

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

As a driver who has also fallen asleep at the wheel once, I agree with your assessment here. I personally doubt the guy does any jail time, and honestly I don't know that jail time really does anything to fix the problem of a driver who falls asleep. "Now you sit in there and remember to never drive tired again."

A good friend of goose and myself is one of the better cyclists I know (just disclosing that he has the same bias we all have) and he has a much different theory about what happened that really hadn't crossed my mind until he brought it up. Basically, he doesn't buy that the officer fell asleep. He says drivers rarely fall asleep on the curvy part of a road because it takes more concentration to navigate. It's the long straightaways that are usually the trouble (this was true in my case) as they take very little alertness to drive if nothing out of the ordinary occurs. He feels that this officer was driving fast through the curves on purpose. Maybe testing out the limits of his car or some sort of thing. Anyway, he thinks the falling asleep at the wheel thing is quite possibly a cop out (pun intended) as the officer knows there is no way to prove he wasn't asleep at the wheel.

I thought about this possibility at the time. As I understand it, however, he crashed into the inside of an outside curve. That is not where you would expect him to lose control if he was speeding. Also, there were no skid marks or even any evidecne he tried to apply brakes, which is instinctive if you are awake, and the dmage to his vehicle does not suggest excessive speed.