Too Fast, Too Stupid:
You know, Crimefighters, one of the great things about being a law enforcement officer is the ability to drive to crimes, accidents, and chase evil doers at REAL exciting speeds. You know, speeds that create that sense of pucker and "oh boy I hope live" kinda feelings.
I was thinking about this after watching another one of these new "Too Fast and Too Stupid" movies featuring hot cars, hot actors, etc... get my drift? Anyway, the problem with these movies is that they mimic what we really do only they suspend the laws of physics we get pretty good at knowing about your third or fourth fatal accident investigation. Momentum, gravity, and inertia are not to be denied and it is the smart Crimefighter that figures it out before one of the above gets up and smacks 'em. All three hit me pretty hard back in '79
Back then I was assigned to Navajo Reservation, living in Teec Nos Pos near Four Corners. I was driving to Chinle to round up bootleggers and DUI's at a rodeo and dance that was going on down there and as was our habit of the day I was clipping along as dusk was getting near darkness. Now when I say darkness, you haven't seen darkness until you spend a new moon on the Res. The nearest streetlight back then was in Flagstaff, five hours away.
As I was streaking westward into the darkness, I got to thinking about night a few months before when McChesney and I drove through the "magical dead cow". We had been working a special detail and I was driving us back to our trailers in the early morning hours at or near the land speed record for Impalas. Why so fast? Well, first, everything was a long way off on the Res and to get places fast you had to go fast and usually had some reason we could think to make it important to get there soon allowing us to haul our cahooters; and, second, we liked driving fast.
I think that is one of the great truths we have to face: we like to fly... albeit low, but still flying. It usually takes some event, or accident to break us of that habit... like smoking through a red light and noticing the Chief's unmarked skidding sideways as you go bye... ouch! Well, my learning event was that night when McChesney and I topped a ridge doing three digits and we saw the cow in the middle of our lane.
She (being dead) just laid right there in our lane not going anywhere and the laws of physics going against us. She had inertia with her and we had Big Mo against us, I mean we had some serious momentum going on. Mac and I let out our manliest screams and I swerved the car ever so slightly while slamming on the brakes. I don't know exactly what happened then except the cow didn't move and we did... right past her and did not hit a damn thing!
We got out, legs shaking like a wheel out of alignment, and went back to that deceased bovine. Both sides of the roadway on US 160 dropped down at better than 60 degrees, I mean steep, we would have been toast, but we had missed her somehow... and we couldn't figure it out. I had some shadow skid about twenty yards before her and it was aimed dead on at that old cow. "Ghost cow" we both kidded as we pushed her off the roadway and she disappeared down the steep rocky slope... not quite sure we weren't right. We returned the next day and the carcass was gone!
They say something isn't really training unless it changes the way you do things. Up until that night driving to Chinle that "ghost cow" hadn't taught me a darn thing. I still drove like a maniac for good reasons and with sheer thrill. Suddenly, I got to thinking about that weird non-accident Mac and I had, and I took my foot off the accelerator.
A few seconds later, at milepost 461 on US160, I had another physics lesson. I had just topped a rolling bluff and started downhill slowly decelerating when I drove into the herd. That's right, a whole damn herd of cows... I hit the brakes... picked out a cow that looked soft and hit her square.
A second later my hood exploded and the cow's rear end smashed through my window expelling more BS than an FOP picnic. I rolled to a stop covered with the freshest manure I had ever seen and a totaled Impala and not a scratch on me! The accident reconstruction boys said the speed at impact was only 59 mph. Since my Lt. was sure I must have been flying low and wanted to know how I had erased must have been hundreds of feet of skid mark to have hit the cow so slow I told him about the "Ghost Cow". That didn't help.
Anyway, Crimefighter, when you are putting that foot through the floor on your next "I got an excuse to haul butt" call, just remember what happened to Buck back on the reservation and think before you get too fast for you it might be more that just fresh cow manure you might have on you if those damn laws of physics catch up with you... wish they would put them back in the movies.
Buck
