Police officers let people off with warnings all the time. But rarely does it come back to haunt them—literally. Retired California Highway Patrol police officer John Tye told a wild story. He gave a reckless driver a break after spotting him wearing a neck brace. The driver promised to stay off the road. Two days later, Tye drove his personal car down the freeway. And he got rear-ended. By the same guy. In the same neck brace.
A second chance gone wrong
Early in his career, Tye felt exhausted after a long shift when he noticed a driver weaving. “I pulled him over, praying that he wasn’t drunk, which would have extended my shift by several hours,” he recalled. Instead, the man wore a neck brace, looking dazed and apologetic.
“I’m sorry, real sorry,” the driver stammered. Tye quickly realized the man wasn’t intoxicated—he had suffered a head injury in a recent accident. His license was suspended, and he had no insurance. Normally, Tye would have impounded the car. But he saw the man’s wife and child sitting in the passenger seat. Stranding a family late at night in a rough neighborhood didn’t sit right with him.
So he let the guy off with a warning. “I allowed his wife to drive the car and admonished him not to drive,” Tye said. That warning didn’t stick.
Déjà vu on the freeway
Monday morning arrived. Tye, off duty and in his freshly painted Camaro, headed to court in downtown L.A. Traffic slowed. Then—bam—someone rear-ended him. Furious, he jumped out and walked up to the car behind him.
The driver rolled down his window. “I’m sorry, real sorry,” he stammered.
Tye froze. The neck brace. The familiar face. The realization hit like a second impact. “Out of the thousands of cars on the Harbor Freeway that morning, I was hit by the same guy I had let go 36 hours earlier on a street 15 miles away!”
This time, he didn’t hesitate. “I told you not to drive!” Tye yelled. The driver blinked in recognition and muttered, “I’ll pay for it.” But Tye already knew the truth. “You don’t have insurance!”
No more warnings. “I called a tow truck to haul his car away,” Tye said. The man lost his vehicle, and Tye lost his patience.
“For the next week, nobody got a break on my beat.”
