>> The police need to push cars to the side of the road on, I'd venture, a daily basis.
Cops are also generally brutal on their vehicles. The biggest problem is probably a cop in a hurry getting out of a running vehicle without putting it into park. They get into lots of low-speed/rolling car collisions. These things happen if you are getting in/out of your car 50 times a day.
Facetious commentary aside – and I do apologize for the tongue in cheekness – as a European I’ve always been struck by just how many wrecks and other debris are littered by the side of the roads in the US. Mileage varies I’m sure (no pun intended) but I covered 6660 miles on a road trip through in the US last year and it seemed almost universal to me that you’d see at least one car wreck (often partially or fully burned out) and loads of other debris like blown tires etc.
I think I’ve even got video from when I was leaving Kennedy Space Center and just a few miles from the bridges there was a car by the side of the road engulfed in flames.
On my latest road trip someone explained to me that the remnants of blown tires are from 18-wheelers that just keep on truckin’ once that happens, basically ignoring it till the next stop or even later. Given how many trucks you see on the road I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true.
This is going to be very dependent on location. I've commuted on various 20-40 mile stretches of highway for the past decade and it's rare to see debris for more than a day or two before someone cleans it up. And I've seen a car "engulfed in flames" exactly one time in my entire adult life.
I've seen cars engulfed in flames I'd say a dozen or more times (alas, the first time I drove into Houston) and it would be more, except I've only lived in large cities 15 out of my 43 years.
Weirdly, growing up in Texas and living in Austin for 20 years, I never saw a burning car until I moved to Alabama. I've seen several as well as many of the resulting pavement scorches.
AL does not have an annual vehicle inspection, by the way.
They don't ignore them. They are mashing that skinny pedal to get that truck somewhere they can get a new tire on the double before DOT sees it and puts them in an expensive and time consuming hole it may take weeks to dig out of depending on who they work for and the details of their operation. The incentive structure truckers work under isn't ideal to say the least.
If a truck driver stops to deal with a blown-out tire, they lose money. Delivery windows are incredibly short - there are bonuses for on-time deliver, and penalties for failure.
So at least some truck drivers will ignore a blowout, particularly if it's in the last couple of hours of a trip.
Literally any accident where stopped traffic can be more dangerous than slow-moving traffic (such as any highway).
It's really not a strange concept and it's weird to me that you can't comprehend a first responder having a need to move a large, heavy, immobilized object.
I googled it; sure enough, can't find UK police vehicles with one. Perhaps it's a policy decision where clearing a road is left to tow trucks, which would take longer to arrive. Obviously there's separate liability there in allowing the police to do the "pushing". And perhaps, in a country of more compact dimensions, the added 1+ft in vehicle length is considered to be not worth the benefit.
Generally yeah, tow trucks or specialist wreckage recovery vehicles do this here (UK), however, in an emergency, it's not uncommon for fire trucks to ram things out of the way too.
When a car breaks down or gets into an accident, gently pushing it to the side lets traffic flow without causing damage to the motorist's car or police cruiser.
Car chases? If, when they stop the car, it’s in the middle of the road, you can’t just leave it there until a tow truck comes; that’d block traffic for longer. So, push it to the side.
I had a tire blowout in the fast lane of 101. The CHP ran a break and the policeman pushed my car to the slow where there was room for me to change my tire.
There is a car accident every 3 seconds in America. Cops are almost always the first on the scene and clearing the highway of wrecked cars before a tow arrives is essential.
The police need to push cars to the side of the road on, I'd venture, a daily basis.