Injured tow truck driver wary of Colorado drivers ignoring move-over law: "They think they're more important"

With another bout of snow hitting the Front Range hard, the threat for road workers, tow truck drivers, police officers and firefighters was raised once again. Colorado's highways continue to be dangerous places for workers trying to do their jobs -- especially in snowstorms.

"There's plenty of people who've lost their lives unnecessarily, simply due to people not wanting to move over, because they think they're more important than the people on the side of the road," said tow truck driver Alex Salgado.

Salgado remains at home, mostly in a wheelchair, working to regain his ability to walk after a Jeep SUV slid into a Colorado State Patrol vehicle, pinning him between the Colorado State Patrol car and his flatbed tow truck on Jan. 5. He sustained four fractures to the pelvis, two puncture wounds in his lower abdomen and other injuries.

Video and audio from the trooper's vehicle shows how Salgado was trying to tell the Colorado State Patrol officer about the situation when they were hit. Salgado was the second tow operator there. Another tow truck had arrived earlier to help a driver stuck in the snow along Interstate 70 near Wolcott in Eagle County. It was struck first by a woman in a pickup who is suspected of driving drunk. Salgado, who at the age of 24 had already been working as a tow truck driver for eight years, arrived to help the other tow operator. The Jeep that knocked the patrol vehicle into him and the trooper slid on ice. Two vehicles stopped behind the scene parted when they saw the Jeep coming. It came right down the middle and hit the Colorado State Patrol vehicle, which was parked nearly perpendicular to the highway. Salgado pushed the trooper who went down under the flatbed when hit and sustained minor injuries.

 The crash is more evidence of trouble on the roads first responders and road workers have been calling attention to in recent years. Last year, 11 Colorado State Patrol vehicles were hit by the side of Colorado's roads. So far this year, five Colorado State Patrol vehicles have been hit already. Last September, two CDOT workers were killed working on the side of a highway in Palisade on the Western Slope.

Colorado has a move-over law requiring drivers to move over a lane for any vehicle with hazard lights on by the side of the road, or slow to 20 mph below the speed limit. But people who work the roads see drivers ignoring laws all the time.

"I couldn't tell you the amount of times that I'm sitting on the side of the highway, and someone's just coming straight at me and not wanting to move over, and they don't care about it at all," said Salgado.

He is worried about returning to a job he loved.

"I don't know if living on the side of the highway is for me anymore," he said. He feels people don't understand why people do jobs like the one he does.

"90% of the people who are working on the side of the highway, we're doing it because we want to either help people or provide a safer environment for everyone traveling on the highways."

But it does not seem to come back to them.

"It's unfair that most people don't care for people like us, because they think that they're higher than us, because they're not working on the side of a highway," he shared.

He worries about all of the people he knows - and doesn't - working on the roadways with danger close by.

"When you walk that white line on the side of the highway every day. The risk of not coming back through that door is a lot higher and you just try not to think about it, even though you know it's there."

There is an online fundraiser set up for Salgado's expenses after the crash. It is titled "Support Alex Salgado's Road to Recovery" on GoFundMe.