VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – Video released Wednesday shows just how close an SUV came to hitting a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy and a Florida Highway Patrol trooper over the weekend on I-95.
The deputy and the trooper were stopped on the side of I-95 overnight on Sunday to help the driver of a car that had hit a deer.
In the video, which came from the trooper’s dash cam, you can see the officers walk past the Volusia County patrol vehicle, then dive for cover as an SUV veers off the road, slams into the back of the patrol vehicle, hits the vehicle that hit the deer, and then spins back into the highway.
The vehicle from the first crash is seen sliding down a hill.
In the video, you can hear the SUV drive over the rumble strips. The deputy says that’s how he was alerted to the oncoming SUV.
“If those rumble strips weren’t there, I would have been dead,” the deputy says. “Because the only way we would’ve realized... We heard the ‘Bzzt,’ and we were like, ‘Oh, (expletive).’”
According to a Florida Highway Patrol report, the driver of the SUV said a vehicle ran them off the road, but the officers say they did not see any other vehicles in the area at the time of the crash.
The driver was taken to Halifax Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries. They were also cited for failure to move over for emergency vehicles and failure to use a designated lane.