it’s illegal because it’s stupidly dangerous.
Baltimore Sun, January 22, 2013:
The incident occurred at about 6:25 a.m., when the sheriff’s deputy saw a Dodge Ram 1500 traveling at a high rate of speed in the Finksburg area.
The deputy tried to pull the car over, but the motorist failed to stop and continued at a high rate of speed onto Old Gamber Road, then turned right onto Old Westminster Pike, according to the sheriff’s office.
The car turned into the Jiffy Mart then continued, without yielding, onto Route 140, where it struck a Ford van that had been traveling eastbound, the sheriff’s report said.
Context. I used to live within a long walk of that Jiffy Mart and know those roads well (my parents still live in Finksburg). Route 91 is Gamber Road and Route 140 is Westminster Pike, also called Baltimore Boulevard, which dumps into I-795 a few miles southeast of the accident. Each of those roads has a roughly parallel narrow and old “Old Gamber Road” and “Old Westminster Pike” which meet in a semi-residential stop sign intersection about 1/8 mile S of the intersection of 91 and 140, which is a major thoroughfare intersection (and a somewhat dangerous one.)
Where the young, and now dead, 29-year old reportedly entered 140 was at the mouth of the Jiffy Mart, which sits between high-traffic 140 and sleepy, essentially access road Old Westminster Pike. In darting from Old Westminster Pike onto Westminster Pike across the lot of the Jiffy Mart, the motorist apparently entered headlong into a very high traffic road with near-Interstate volumes headed southeast to Baltimore, Towson, Pikesville, I-795, etc. It may be the heaviest rush-hour traffic density corridor road in the Baltimore metro area not served by any public transit whatsoever, though the NW end of the Baltimore Metro is 9-10 miles down 140 and I-795. Entering southeast onto 140 at a high rate of speed at an hour before sunrise in winter after a major federal holiday as reported to evade a law enforcement agent would be rather dangerous and, in this case, was apparently fatally so.
Thinking that you can outrace a police vehicle successfully is an extreme example of maurylogic and, if events were as reported, a fatal example. Very sad to hear and am glad that the other motorist wasn’t injured more severely. Please, if you get pursued by the police in Maryland, don’t play OJ or Bo and Luke Duke: pull over in a safe and orderly manner, stay calm and if necessary contact your attorney.
