A dashcam video from police in Alaska shows a tow truck operator and an SUV driver who have both used up a year's worth of luck in a harrowing near-miss on a snowy northern highway.
The video was recorded on Christmas Day from the dashcam of an Anchorage PD officer. The tow truck driver was helping a disabled Ford Ranger pickup, sitting in a turnoff on the Seward Highway, a rural Alaskan roadway.
On the outside of a long turn, the tow truck operator is getting ready to look underneath the pickup. At the same moment he's crouching down, a Kia crossover in the oncoming lane is losing control in the icy turn. The tow operator puts his head under the Ranger, unaware that the Kia is fighting to maintain a grip on the icy roadway.
Fortunately, the crossover driver's response is the right one. In a flurry of thrown snow worthy of an action movie stunt, the crossover drifts in exactly the right arc to miss the legs of the tow truck operator by mere inches.
More good fortune than anything else, the tow truck operator was unscathed, and the crossover avoided the pickup, police car, and the tow truck as well as the tow truck operator.
Could this near-catastrophe have been avoided completely? Probably. Like the Anchorage PD says at the end of the video: It's winter. Slow down.
