Some of us get to deal with the outcome of reckless behavior. I love this argument: "who else is going to be out there during a tornado?" It only takes one person to cross the intersection - one person with a green light, a family driving away from the storm, a public safety vehicle responding somewhere, or another chaser (quite possibly you) driving the opposite direction. You glance up from the tornado and see that the light is green, you accelerate on through the intersection, and then you get to see my place of employment - if you're lucky, that is.
Your argument is valid, but I don't quite understand what your point is. We aren't talking about a situation where a chaser is leaving a town to get l33t footage of a tube plowing a field on the outskirts, running red lights and putting others in danger in the process. This was a case where a tornado was
in the town, and a chaser was following the tornado.
Before I get to the chaser's motive, here's the answer to the "2 AM phone call" argument
as it applies to this case: if a family is on the road escaping a tornado that's in town, they're idiots, plain and simple.
Half of all the deaths in the 1979 tornado that struck my hometown were from people killed in their cars while attempting to escape. If you are attempting to leave an area affected by a tornado with no training or experience on how to drive as safely as possible relative to tornadic situations, you are a fool, and it is
your fault - not nature's, and not the actions of a chaser/spotter or some other fool driving willy-nilly away from the storm - that you ended up (possibly with your whole family) at a hospital. The only time when it is acceptable for Joe Public to drive in this situation is if he's just at the wrong place at the wrong time on the road or in a mobile home, and must escape the path because he has no other way to immediately and rationally seek shelter. At that point, all those other people on the road pose a much less risk to life and limb than the tornado itself.
That being said, anyone choosing to be on the road at the time of a tornado - whether trained or not - is inherently choosing to accept the risk of a dangerous driving situation. This isn't a Sunday drive around town to go pick up some things at the Wal-Mart. If you're talking safety, a sturdy shelter is the safest place to be, in an interior room or basement with Rosie O'Donnell laying on you. The road - for reasons of the tornado and of the chaotic drivers - is certainly not safe during a tornado, and that should be immediately obvious to the most casual observer.
Now, as for the chaser himself, was he morally right doing what he did? To go back to 1979, listen to the tapes of the spotter network that are archived on the NWS website. Several spotters state clearly they run stoplights to keep up with the tornado, and that was back in a time where less people knew better and thus more panicked people crowded the roads. Were these spotters morally right in doing what they did? I say yes, because they relayed important information about the position of the tornado as it rolled through the city, and at the very least they could have saved other spotters or even people monitoring radio who were otherwise out of power at the time.
If this chaser was relaying information via phone, or had a rational basis to believe his internet stream was relaying or gathering important information to the right personnel, then he was morally justified keeping up with the storm (or staying out of harm's way). I don't think he'd be morally justified breaking the law and putting others on the road (for whatever reason) in more danger if he was gonna set some probe somewhere in the middle of the friggin city (as opposed to a safer countryside area) or if he was simply following along to oogle at the damage like Beavis getting excited over a fire, but I seriously doubt he was there just to capture Faces of Death type carnage on video for nothing but his own glory.
Given that his actions weren't of this type, and given that running the intersections was
warranted to keep up with the storm or keep out of it, then his actions to break the law were morally justified. Emergency personnel and spotters/chasers are well aware of the elevated driving dangers already, and it can be assumed at least that a spotter or chaser is bright enough to recognize and not interfere with an emergency vehicle's operation. As for Joe Public on the road in a city during a tornado instead of in a shelter, I have very little sympathy for him.
As for common sense...if you actually condone dangerous driving.....
I don't condone dangerous driving just like I don't condone murder. But if someone's in your house about to kill you and you have a gun, I condone it all the way. Laws are not Kantian imperatives that must be followed at all times no matter what the situation.
No offense, but when it comes to a safety issue such as this, you have not earned the right to tell me to "chill out" until you have been in my shoes. It's a wonderful thing getting to do CPR on a ten year old child, knowing that if you do save the child he will never be normal again, just because somebody blew a red light.
No matter how much experience one has on one side of a discussion than the other, reality will still always win out every time. We knew of a particular idiot who chucked his kids in his truck and attempted to escape in '79 (instead of getting in his BASEMENT), only to get his truck flipped. Thankfully his kids were okay, but let's say he "booked it" past an intersection and got hit by one of the spotters that day who ran the light and who unfortunately didn't see him due to the chaos. Who would be responsible for the loss of the kid's life in that case? That's right, the dad.
***EDIT: I do want to say that I commend the offenders in this case for coming forward. That is a huge step in the right direction.***
If this case for some reason goes to trial and this guy for some reason gets convicted,
then he is an offender. Otherwise, he
allegedly offended, and for all we know a judge or jury would sufficiently determine that he had just cause to break the law and overturn the conviction.
If this chaser knows what he did was wrong - if he WAS just there doing it for his own glory entirely or just to woohoo at the carnage - THEN his apology is certainly warranted. Otherwise, his apology is nothing more than an attempt to quell the fires that are currently raging over this.
