A Minnesota woman has managed to take distracted driving to a whole new level. Police arrested her after several 911 calls reporting reckless driving and found that she’d been watching Netflix on her iPad, while at the wheel.
Netflix and driving is emerging as the most dangerous form of distracted driving, and this recent incident is example of that. The woman had placed her iPad on the passenger seat and was watching something on the popular streaming platform.
Several motorists noticed her car was weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes without signaling and even going out on the shoulder. They called the police, but the officers didn’t get to her in time: distracted, she crashed the car into the median cables on I-94 after running off the road.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the same driver became responsible for another crash farther up the road.
“It did result in a crash. And the crash not only caused problems for that person, but several other people because it backed up traffic, it resulted in a secondary crash, which involved four other vehicles,” Sergeant Jesse Grabow, with the Minnesota State Patrol, tells Valley News Live. “They did have some injuries and they were transported by ambulance.”
Luckily, this time, no one was killed or seriously injured in the 2 crashes, but in any other scenario, things could have played out definitely worse. This is why Sergeant Grabow is urging motorists or pedestrians to call in immediately any instance of reckless driving they notice. Getting out of the way of a distracted driver may work, but it’s no guarantee it might work for another motorist.
“When you're seeing a vehicle going all over the road, people wonder, ‘at what point should I call in?’,” Grabow says. “Well, I say if it gets to that point where it's such a clear and present danger, where if this person continues down the road they're going to hurt themselves or they're going to hurt someone else – by all means call.”
Several motorists noticed her car was weaving in and out of traffic, changing lanes without signaling and even going out on the shoulder. They called the police, but the officers didn’t get to her in time: distracted, she crashed the car into the median cables on I-94 after running off the road.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the same driver became responsible for another crash farther up the road.
“It did result in a crash. And the crash not only caused problems for that person, but several other people because it backed up traffic, it resulted in a secondary crash, which involved four other vehicles,” Sergeant Jesse Grabow, with the Minnesota State Patrol, tells Valley News Live. “They did have some injuries and they were transported by ambulance.”
Luckily, this time, no one was killed or seriously injured in the 2 crashes, but in any other scenario, things could have played out definitely worse. This is why Sergeant Grabow is urging motorists or pedestrians to call in immediately any instance of reckless driving they notice. Getting out of the way of a distracted driver may work, but it’s no guarantee it might work for another motorist.
“When you're seeing a vehicle going all over the road, people wonder, ‘at what point should I call in?’,” Grabow says. “Well, I say if it gets to that point where it's such a clear and present danger, where if this person continues down the road they're going to hurt themselves or they're going to hurt someone else – by all means call.”