police were given a thankless task of protecting reckless behavior of protestors at the expense of normal driving public involved in everyday activity on a public thoroughfare.
i am not a lawyer, but it is my impression that enforcing the law on an interstate freeway is the responsibility of the local state, which in this case is the state of washington. at least under normal circumstances, the public has a reasonable right to presume that the state laws are being enforced on interstate freeways, and normally, interlopers have a reasonable right to presume that they will be arrested on interstate freeways. in this case, it seems imho that the public trust has been violated by the state of washington. washington state tried and failed to shut down the freeway on behalf of the illegal protest, a fool’s errand to begin with.
i informally measured the time between the warning (a protestor shouting “car! car!” to the other protestors as revealed by one of the victim’s livestreamed videos) and the impacts as roughly 7 seconds. in those seven seconds, the two victims can be seen on the bridge video as moving from the far right lane or emergency lane of the freeway to a faster lane. imho, situational awareness would dictate moving away from the center of the freeway lanes and towards if not past the emergency lane.
btw, the name of the driver gets no hits on google news, so apparently the scrubbers are busy on this event...
“...enforcing the law on an interstate freeway is the responsibility of the local state”
IMHO, states which refuse to keep protests off interstate highways which impedes / stops traffic should lose federal highway funding.