Georgia officers get specialized training to avoid injury during roadside stops

Next to a domestic violence call, it’s one of the most dangerous situations a police officer faces every day: the roadside stop.

“That’s all I remember, hearing a loud boom and then tires screeching,” DeKalb County police Officer Yosef Raskin told Regan.

Raskin was on the shoulder of Interstate-20 in December 2019 finishing up some paperwork. An out-of-control driver slammed into the rear of his patrol car.

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“The first thing that came to my mind: I’m lucky to be alive. To this day, I question how I did not get T-boned when it pushed me across four lanes of traffic. Someone was watching out for me,” Raskin said.

Raskin, who was severely injured, said it’s the second time he’d been hit on the highway.

“They’re not looking down the road. They’re not paying attention to what they’re doing. And the next thing you know, we have a collision,” Maj. John Hutcheson with the Georgia Police Academy told Regan.

Regan visited the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, where officers and cadets were getting a crash course on the best way to position their patrol cars during a roadside traffic stop.

“At certain times, we teach them if they can block part of a lane to preserve the safety of a violator we tell them to do that. If it’s an unsafe situation, we even tell them to move off the roadway and take it to an exit ramp,” Truman Boyle said. Boyle spent 36 years with the Georgia State Patrol and is now a crash reconstruction expert.

In the crash simulation, an officer has pulled over a pickup truck and parked his patrol car behind it.

A driverless, remote-operated car speeds down the road at over 60 mph, veering onto the median and slamming into the police car. The mannequin used to simulate a police officer takes a hit from the impact.

“It kind of did a sideswipe to him. If the car wasn’t going as fast, it may not have moved him or the car. It’s all about dynamics,” Boyle said.

The demonstration will measure many variables affecting crash impact. Is it better for the officer’s vehicle to be directly behind the offender’s vehicle, or stride the median? Should his front wheels be straight or turned? Boyle said these critical decisions can make a difference between life or death.

“A lot of this depends on how the car hit you. Did they sides swipe you? Was it full rear impact? There’s just so many scenarios that you can never address all of them. We try to choose the best on what is survivable and try to teach them that,” Boyle said.

During a traffic stop, an officer must divide his attention between the person pulled over and on-coming traffic, which is often a perilous balancing act.

“You have to make sure you’re always aware of your surroundings -- the traffic that’s coming from the rear,” Hutcheson said. “You want to position your patrol car so where you have a little bit of over-coverage for you safety behind the violator vehicles.”

Georgia law requires drivers to move over a lane or slow down when approaching a traffic stop. Violators face a fine of up to $500 and three points on their driving record. According to the Georgia State Patrol, there were 1,041 Move Over Law citations in 2018. In 2019, they issued 1,395.

Because of the pandemic, citations have dropped for 2020, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less dangerous for officers like Josef Raskin.

He told Regan moving a lane over could possibly save a life.

“At the end of the day, you’re protecting us and anybody else, and you’re protecting yourself,” Raskin said.