I realize I'm preaching to the choir for the most part here, but figured I'd post anyway in the (probably unlikely) event someone finds my observations and thoughts on the matter useful.
Just because storm chasers sometimes get bad press from LE officials doesn't mean there's no reason for it. We need to look at this from their perspective, too, and local LE's mission (protecting the residents of their township/county) is a lot more important than ours, especially since the vast majority of us are primarily doing this for our own pleasure. Yes, we chasers help them out sometimes by assisting them in this task in varying ways, but I think we need to remember that they're the ones who have been conferred the authority to protect the citizens in their jurisdiction, not us, and we need to respect that and do what we can to make their jobs easier instead of more difficult.
Now with respect to 5/23, I certainly saw my fair share of people clogging the roadways with bodies, tripods, and vehicles (I'm half-surprised there weren't lawn chairs), and I can assure you these were not all locals or chase vans. Yes, these chasers were in the minority, but it only takes a few to cause a serious problem, and even veterans can make boneheaded errors at times. I know I have, such as on March 28 when my wife yelled at me to get away from the road, and I suddenly realized I was standing mere inches from the pavement with traffic moving at 70+ mph--not the smartest idea, and undoubtedly annoying to anyone driving past. Anyway, sure, folks eventually got out of the way 5/23 and let us pass each time, but not before we were forced to repeatedly come to a near-standstill on multiple highways. Combine that with cars not fully pulled off the road (90% of the car off the pavement does not count) and people chaotically getting in/out of them from all sides, and it was simply not safe to drive anything even remotely close to the speed limit in some areas. If I were a LE officer I might very well have a negative view of storm chasers, especially after witnessing a few situations like that. Heck, I might even feel pressured to write people up even with a tornado on the ground, just to get people off the road so first responders can get through more smoothly once the tornado has moved on.
Another thing that seems to be a significant problem is cars travelling very slowly on highways and essentially blocking traffic even though they are moving (I got stuck behind a friend who has plenty of chasing experience doing exactly that on March 28). If you're going to go really slow because a storm looks interesting, please just pull off so everyone else can continue on their way. There's no reason to treat a state highway like a residential neighborhood, and I'm sure locals are quite annoyed by it--I know I am as a chaser. We really need to do all we can to make sure we think of residents first, and ourselves second, at all times. This is not an easy task in the heat of the moment (I'm hardly perfect myself), but if that's the attitude we collectively work to have, these problems would be much more isolated.
