Shane, there is a point of making a mountain from a molehill. However all it takes is for something to happen and then it gets a life of its own. None of us are virgins when it comes to driving on a chase. However for every ten good things we accomplish on a chase it will all be lost in the video of one screw up. All it takes is the right person to complain and the trouble starts. Safety should be first.
This is fine, but I don't think the screw-up will come from the chaser corner. I think the biggest chance of disaster is from some hormone-crazy 16-year-old hopping in his jalopy with his camera and getting killed because he has absolutely no clue what he's doing. That's when Bill-O and all the rest of them step in waving the flag and attacking the idea of stormchasing because they "think of the children."
I know this is my first year, and somehow I've been on nine chases and driven 7500 miles without coming across an absolutely massive convergence. But on March 30th down in Southern Oklahoma, we ran into quite a gathering of chasers (~50 vehicles) in the dark during a pretty menacing storm. Even at night, people were still parked safely, and as the storm approached (I'd bet most of us didn't have any data out there) the semi-exodus was conducted in a routine and courteous manner. I didn't see anyone running off other chasers trying to reposition - "lightbar-equipped" vehicles and all were courteous.
This might not have been a "real" chaser convergence, but it was a potentially dangerous situation in a poor area after nightfall, and I didn't see any rampant breaking of the law. In short, even though I'm sure some chasers put other chasers and citizens at risk at times, I think the molehill is still just a hill.
I can see this scenario happening someday, if there is a mod/high risk a state police agency or department in that area assigns more units to work on reckless driving from the groups of chasers.
This is not going to happen, and to echo a comment made by someone else earlier in this thread, neither is the "blizzard shutdown scenario" that would prevent anyone save emergency vehicles and media from a dangerous severe situation.
On April 7th, a PDS watch was issued for a widespread portion of Oklahoma, and it ended up pretty much busting out. Iowa's notorious HIGH last year busted out over a good portion of the chaseable area. Can you imagine the waste of resource on these days, when tons of bored LEOs would essentially sit around and wait for nothing, or worse, be diverted from matters of more pressing attention for the purpose of babying stormchasers on days when storms crap out? What about the extra LEOs from all the counties not effected even on an outbreak day? This also answers the ridiculous "shutdown" scenario mentioned earlier, because unlike a much more predictable imminent blizzard event, the uproar from shutting down travel on a bust day would be deafening.
This could come from citizen complaints,
There are too many problems with this: misidentification, "witch-hunting" from other chasers or citizens that didn't like the chaser, unreliable testimony, etc. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by citizen complaints, but you're going to have to have something else other than hearsay to bring a chaser to court.
You know that the news has their own agenda and cuts out facts to fit it. On the "Twister Sisters" show last year (I know this is not news), some chaser was depicted as core-punching a TOR-warned storm at night with a very young son in the car. What if FOX News ran this story? Can you charge the chaser with reckless endangerment? What if the facts of this story were snipped to make it appear more dramatic, to get ratings up?
So let's say Chaser X and I get into a huge argument and I block him off in Nebraska on Thursday, out on some desolate road during a storm. He films it. Next year we're both chasing in your county and this video on the net rule is imposed, and Chaser X puts this video of me from a long time back on Youtube, claiming it to have happened in your county. Are you justified in charging me with a crime in your jurisdiction?
The end result is the same problems for anyone chasing. Ensuring we do what is right now may prevent problems for us in the future. If officers are ordered to crack down on something you can bet it will happen. A little common sense and courtesy will go along ways............
All right, I will give you this paragraph wholeheartedly, and I agree. Being (and for the most of us,
remaining) courteous to other chasers and citizens, and creating a safe environment for them, will mean that future problems will be minimized.
But LEOs have bigger fish to fry than making sure chasers behave - fish such as responding to emergency calls, injuries, and lawlessness during extreme severe events in a populated area. LEOs should not be scattered about chasing chasers, especially since not every setup has one mothership with a gigantic choo-choo following it. Additionally, clamping down on chasing will disrupt the majority of good-minded chasers and spotters, who will eventually stop going out because they fear a ticket or imprisonment even more than a tornado. This would lead to the disruption of spotting and reporting of severe weather, and the second that LEOs drop the ball on a deadly storm which spotters or chasers at home would have otherwise reported to save lives is the second that makes this idea utterly unforgivable.
