I was watching the live feed of Kelly Williamson and his partner Randy as they were chasing after a storm cell all morning on Youtube, the feed was very blotchy but you can clearly see the signs of the upcoming intersection and stop sign, scrub and trees were on the right. Not sure if the other vehicle a Jeep Wrangler had stopped either or if it was even a 4 way stop. The Suburban never slowed down and you can hear them commenting about the cloud circulation.
Other stormchasers routinely ignore stop signs if its out in the middle of nowhere.
They must have had a 3 second delay as the last image showed them just about to go through the intersection and then nothing.Kelly driving the Suburban was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected. There was over 300 of these storm chasers out the day before, my question is....why?
Thats crazy to allow that many people to drive too fast often not looking at the road. I hope i get flamed to death but i think they should be restricted, get warning lights, be authorized or licensed. Too many adrenaline junkies looking for youtube hits. And the professionals that get complacent.
I strongly agree with one point in your post: Storm chasers should be given lights and sirens. The storm chasers aren’t the problem, though; the problem is all those idiots driving around when they should be taking shelter. There should be NO traffic except storm chasers and emergency vehicles, when a tornado is in the area. And if storm chasers had lights and sirens, they would be able to see each other’s vehicles better in these stormy situations, which would definitely help them avoid accidents like these.
CedarDave, these people aren’t “hobbyists”; they’re volunteers, putting their lives on the line to gather valuable information for the National Weather Service. They HAVE to speed and drive recklessly to survive, because tornadoes are very unpredictable. If a tornado suddenly changes direction and heads toward you, you’d better clear out fast, or there would be a lot more than 3 fatalities in a single storm season.
From 2013
“Veteran Storm Chaser Among Those Killed In Oklahoma Twister”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3026546/posts