The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has decided to sue video sites, including YouTube and Break.com, for posting footage of a crash that happened on May 10, 2007. The crash is very intense as a car travels southbound on the New Jersey Turnpike at very high speeds, and then crashes into the Great Egg Harbor Toll Plaza. The car then bursts into flames killing the 52–year-old driver.
I hadn’t seen the video before I heard this announcement of the lawsuit, and searching for someone that still had it posted was quite a headache! All of the sites have removed it (as expected), but searching a little deeper led me to Blinx who listed some MySpace postings of the video (here and here).
YouTube removed the video “because it violated our terms of services. Because our removal also complied with our obligations under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, we see no legal basis for a claim,” according to a spokesperson at YouTube. It also doesn’t make sense to me why they are getting sued if it was promptly removed, but I guess it is all part of the crazy world we live in.
I have taken a still image of the accident in case those videos get pulled as well. It will spoil the video, so I only recommend looking at the image if the videos don’t work. Of course, I also point out some things that you may not have noticed:
appears to me that the cop car was chasing them.
This trend in online video bothers me. Am I the only one left with any morals that doesn’t enjoy watching people die? If it was my girlfriend or family member that died in this crash I’d be pretty offended that people were viewing it as entertainment.
Maybe we should be looking at the plethora of surveillances cams that capture every single moment of our lives?
Ahh, I think you might be right.
I don’t think most people would view it as entertainment, I know I didn’t. It is more of a wakeup call that these things happen. It is like seeing the Twin Towers collapsing in New York after the terrorist attack, everyone couldn’t help but watch because it was so sad.
I have just had the video forwarded as one those “funny things to read/watch”
The subject line was “how not to go thru a toll booth”
I suppose if the subject of the mail had been “Watch a 52 year old guy kill himself in a car accident and then watch the car then burst into flames so if he was not dead from the impact he would have been burnt to death”. . . . I am not sure many would have watched it.
It is a sad inditement on the world in which we live that a video of a guy dying in a car accident can be categorized as a “funny video”
His stupidity killed him. Running from the cop or just excessive speed resulted in his death. Not a funny video but one that serves as a lesson to stupid people. I think it’s o.k. to post it so hopefully the next idiot thinks twice.
this took place on the Garden State Parkway last year, the cop was running a nearby truck exhaust checkpoint, so he was able to get there promptly. Secondly, the driver had a history of seizures and reportedly had one before impact, before approaching the toll area, the driver was killed instantly as he was thrown from his car and landed on the pavement beyond the toll as the vechile burst into flames…. this was no boneheaded cop car chase or speeding because he was in hurry… just a seriously tragic accident