More on "extreme" storm chasing, part 3

Another tragic storm chasing incident has occurred:  a traffic crash on rural roads in the Texas Panhandle.  There were three fatalities - 2 in a vehicle that ran a stop sign, and 1 in the vehicle into which they collided.  All three victims of this were storm chasing at the time.  I wrote about an eerily similar incident that happened in 2015, here.  The evidence is mounting that being on the highways is indeed the most dangerous threat to chasers (and others).  I wrote a guide to safe, responsible storm chasing decades ago, and I rated being on the roads as the #1 threat before anyone had been killed.  At least 7 people have died in road wrecks during storm chases, that I know of.  Additional fatalities are inevitable.  It only takes a few seconds of inattention to the task of driving to result in terrible consequences.

I am not somehow invulnerable to all this.  I could be distracted by something while driving on a chase and be responsible for a fatal crash.  Like the tragedy of the 31 May 2013 deaths of the Twistex team:  Tim and Paul Samaras, and Carl Young - bad things can happen to anyone, even someone trying their best to behave responsibly.  However, these recent traffic fatalities both involved a chaser running a stop sign.  It might be possible to do so in relative safety on a rural road, but even on rural roads, it's both illegal and foolish to do.

These are unnecessary deaths.  The so-called "chase community" (which really isn't a "community" at all, but rather a group of people with a shared hobby) needs to take a long look at their behavior during their chase activities.  If someone has done some irresponsible driving in the past, this might be a good time to resolve to discontinue such practices for good.  This is the 2nd recent wake-up call, folks.  The time is long overdue to get serious about ceasing illegal and unsafe driving during a storm chase [or any other time, for that matter!]  No one gets a free pass on the roads, and this includes people chasing for TV.

Supplement:   Some news media have gone into attack mode on storm chasers as "thrill-seekers" as a result of this tragedy.  If someone can witness the grandeur and beauty of the atmosphere and NOT get an adrenaline rush, I would have to wonder for what reason they're chasing.  I see no problem with being a thrill-seeker - as I noted in my 2014 talk at ChaserCon. That doesn't mean we all have a death wish or are intentionally putting ourselves in imminent danger.

The media narrative they always pre-suppose is that the people who do this are all crazy fools with a death wish. They struggle to grasp why people choose to chase and their pre-supposition blinds them to what chasers actually say. They look for a sound bite to support their already-written storyline about crazy storm chasers. Their usually crappy stories show they don't get it and likely never will ... see here.