The staff here couldn’t find the police report that goes along with this Dash Cam of the Week, but we bet it’s a doozy. After all, it’s not every day that a trooper gets a truckload of beer dumped on him.
In the video released last week by the Nevada Highway Patrol, we see the officer pull over a car for speeding on I-15 in Las Vegas.
"You guys have anything to drink tonight?" Trooper Travis Smaka asks the vehicle's occupants. If he only knew what was coming next.
Fortunately, he’s developed a sixth sense—or at least a reasonable sense of concern when making a stop on a narrow freeway shoulder—and his alertness pays off here.
"Just as I ask the question, I hear the sound that always gets the hairs on my neck standing up, of brakes locking up," Smaka tells News3LV.
Turns out, a beer truck was cut off by another vehicle swerving suddenly around the parked patrol car—resulting, as Smaka tells it, in “a tidal wave of beer” that soaked his freshly dry-cleaned uniform.
NHP released the video to remind motorists of what can happen when they drive carelessly around semis, and to promote the department’s planned ride-along, placing troopers in big rigs.
The speeding driver? Smaka let him go with a warning, and a beer-bathed interior. (And good luck explaining that beer smell to next cop that pulls him over.)
