TULSA, Okla. — Crashes kept the Oklahoma Highway Patrol busy Friday morning, even damaging some of their own cars.
OHP says as of 12 p.m. they had responded to 46 injury accidents, 250 non-injury collisions, and 74 motorist assists across Oklahoma.
Drivers going too fast for the road conditions hit two trooper cars. OHP said when the snow started falling and road conditions quickly deteriorated, drivers didn’t slow down.
They said while the storm wasn’t expected to leave much snow and moved through quickly, it ended up being worse for drivers
“We’ve actually worked more crashes today than we did in the last two snow events in February combined,” OHP Lt. Mark Southall said.
Two of the many calls they responded two were of their own troopers.
“They were both stopped at a crash scene that they were already investigating when they were inside their vehicles and then struck by another car,” Southall said.
Neither trooper was injured, but Southall said situations like these do impact their ability to respond to other emergencies.
“When something like that does happen and we end up losing two units, that’s a big impact to us because we already are so short-handed, and we don’t have enough troopers to be able to take all the calls that we’re given,” Lt. Mark Southall said.
He said both drivers were traveling too fast for the road conditions and were unable to stop before hitting the troopers' cars, that’s why he said it’s important to maintain a safe speed, don’t follow too close, and expect the unexpected.
“When you are traveling around troopers, or law enforcement officers, or record drivers, or the snowplows, travel at a safe and prudent speed because they’re often on foot at those scenes and in very precarious positions,” Southall said.
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