Solo and Buttercup, two of the latest victims of a snowmachine collision on the Denali Highway/Mike Parker via Facebook
Machines are our friends until….
Outrage has followed the deaths of three more Alaska sled dogs hit by a motorized vehicle on the Denali Highway, but in many ways, the tragic collision is just a 49th state twist on a national trend.
All across the country there has been an uptick in animals, and people, being rundown and killed by motor vehicles, and the only real difference here is that in the 49th state, the vehicle involved in the latest tragedy happened to be a snowmachine – the motorized convenience of choice for winter travelers in the modern north – rather than a car or truck.
And as is often the case in these deadly collisions, speed appears to have played a major role in the deaths. Sled-dog driver Mike Parker, who is dealing with the trauma of witnessing the dogs in his team being smashed to death, said he doesn’t know specifically how fast the snowmachine that ran into his team was traveling, but said it could be fairly described as “hauling ass,” which in Alaska terms is somewhere well north of 30 mph and often well north of 50 mph.
With dogs as with people, the higher the speed at impact the greater the risk of death. For humans, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), “the average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10 percent at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25 percent at 32 mph, 50 percent at 42 mph, 75 percent at 50 mph, and 90 percent at 58 mph.”
Dogs appear somewhat more durable than humans, so they are likely to suffer slightly less mortality at higher speeds than people. But the general relationship between higher speeds and greater odds of death is a simple matter of physics: energy equals one-half mass times velocity squared ( 1/2 m v2).
Or, put simply, increasing the speed at which an object is moving has a far greater influence on its force at impact than the weight of the object, and thus, for instance, a 450-pound Polaris Khaos Slash with a 200-pound rider traveling at 80 mph could generate as much force at impact as a 3,000-pound Ford Focus at about 40 mph.
What happened
Parker said he is baffled as to how his team got hit. He clearly remembers seeing four snowmachines hurtling down the unmaintained in winter Denali Highway toward his team, and “I was wildly trying to signal with my headlight” by swinging the beam back and forth across the road, he said.
The machines he’d seen before, he added, and on those occasions, they had safely passed.
This time, he said, “the first guy saw me” and veered away. So, too, the second.
But a third, driven by a test rider employed by Minnesota-based Polaris Inc., according to Alaska State Troopers, slammed into the dogs. The driver is unavailable for comment.
Troopers have so far refused to identify him, citing a section of the Alaska public records law saying they are required to provide “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of the law enforcement records or information interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
How exactly identifying the driver in a deadly collision would “interfere with enforcement proceedings” is unclear, but Alaska law enforcement in general has a long history of protecting motor vehicle operators involved in deadly collisions.
Polaris, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of snowmobiles and off-road vehicles, also has a long history of testing its machinery in the 49th state and has been a trooper equipment provider.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers on their Polaris snowmobiles/Department of Public Safety photo
Parker said the Polaris group reported to have been testing new machines on the Denail should have been well aware of his dog team as well as other dog teams and other snowmachine traffic on the Denali.
“They knew I was out there,” he said. “They passed me a bunch of times in daylight and in darkness.”
Parker said he cannot understand how one of the snowmachines could have run into his well-lit team shining in the dark, but snowmachines running at high speeds can sometimes kick up a significant plume of loose snow. That can limit the visibility of riders following a leading sled.
During the 2008 Irondog – a 1,000-mile snowmachine race along the Iditarod Trial from Big Lake to Nome – Todd Palin, once the husband of former Gov. Sarah Palin – was riding with limited visibility in the spindrift snow kicked up by the sled of partner Scott Palin when he hit a barrel buried in the snow along the trail and suffered a crash that ripped a ski of his sled and sent him flying. He broke his arm in that crash although that was not revealed until he suffered serious injuries in a 2016 crash when his now ex-wife, a former Republican candidate for vice-president, was on the campaign trail in support of then-presidential candidate and now former President Donald Trump.
Parker said he has no way of knowing if the snow kicked up by the Polaris group hampered visibility, but being unable to see what is ahead is generally considered a good reason to slow down.
Parker said he can say none of the machines slowed to any noticeable degree, and the third driver in the group was “haulin’ ass” as fast as the others when his sled hit the dogs, Parker said
The rider, who was wearing a helmet and body armor, was not injured in the collision. Two of the dogs were killed almost instantly, and two were seriously injured. One of the latter died on the way to a veterinary hospital; the other is still hanging on.
A trooper dispatch said the “snowmachine operator stopped to render aid,” but Parker said that is not exactly what happened. The dog driver admitted he was in shock and angry in the wake of the collision, and told the snowmachine driver who hit the dogs to get help, at which point the man and the rest of the Polaris group quickly took off.
Parker said he was still dealing with the dead dogs when the group came past again “hauling ass back toward Paxson.” The near ghost town of Paxson is at the east end of the 135-mile-long Denali with the tiny community Cantwell at the west end, where Parker had based his dog truck.
The latest collision, coming in the wake of a collision that killed two dogs owned by well-known Iditarod Trail Sled Dog musher Dallas Seavey, has sparked such widespread anger that some on social media have gone so far as to suggest the desire to “go vigilante” on speeding snow-machine drivers.
Ironically different
The vehemence of the social media reactions to the death of the dogs is strangely different from the national acceptance of the rising toll of animals, and people, killed on U.S. roads.
The deaths of U.S. pedestrians hit by motor vehicles has risen 77 percent from 4,302 in 2010 to 7,264 in 2021 which had the New York Times on Monday pondering why after decades of declines in pedestrian deaths before 2010 “American roads started to become deadlier for pedestrians, particularly at night.”
The Times, somewhat predictably, blamed the increase in the number of oversized, fuel-guzzling, carbon-dioxide-producing trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) now on American roads, an increase in homelessness which has left more poor people walking on or near roads full of fast-moving traffic, and smartphones that now distract so many drivers.
But the newspaper pretty much glossed over the steady march of technology that has made all motorized vehicles steadily more convenient to use and easier to drive, which has in turn encouraged people to drive them at higher rates of speed
Not to mention the social acceptance of bad driving.
After bicycle riding, National Football League (NFL) coach Greg Knapp was run down and killed by an inattentive driver who drove into a bike lane in San Ramon, Calif., local authorities decided to do nothing.
Why drivers “need to be attentive” when there are no consequences for being inattentive was not explained, but the view reflected by the Contra Costa DA is widespread. When South Dakota Public Broadcasting investigated the deaths of pedestrians run down and killed in that state, it found that of 31 drivers who struck and killed pedestrians from 2016 through 2020, “none…served jail or prison time, and none paid a fine close to the $1,000 imposed on the (state’s former) attorney general” who hit a man walking along a South Dakota road and left him to die.
South Dakota Public Media has been one of the few mainstream news organizations with the courage to delve into this issue. It has largely been ignored elsewhere though the behavior in South Dakota appears to represent a national norm.
These sorts of attitudes have helped spawn a machine takeover of travel on and along the streets of America as well as on the winter trails of Alaska. The thinking when non-motorized users are rundown and killed is that it was largely their fault because they shouldn’t have been on or near the road or trail.
“And that vicious cycle isn’t just about walkers being scared off of sidewalks by near-miss crashes and clouds of vehicle smog. It’s about transportation leaders claiming there’s ‘just no demand’ for safe walking infrastructure when they see so few walkers around; it’s about developers building homes further and further out on the fringe for customers who simply ‘prefer’ to drive an hour to work every day; it’s about public transit budgets being slashed to make space on the balance sheet for more ‘popular’ highway projects.
“And in time, Levinson argues, the cycle of unwalkability sinks in even deeper. Eventually, many residents of unwalkable places become unable to walk because of sedentary lifestyle diseases that can all too easily set in when they don’t have the time, resources, or motivation to drive to a gym or a park. Meanwhile, others come to authentically love their cars and the culture that surrounds them, and to believe that walking is inherently undesirable, undignified, or even emasculating.”
The latter phenomenon overtook rural Alaska long ago, although in Alaska villages the vehicles of choice are usually four-wheelers and snowmachines rather than cars. It’s common, however, to be offered a ride on one or the other and to have the owner give you a bewildered look if told, “Thanks, but I’m not going that far. I’m happy to walk.”
America, including Alaska, has long been a nation of drivers, but it is becoming evermore a nation of drivers, and the resulting collisions and deaths are inevitable, especially in places like the Denali where there are no motor vehicle rules.
Haul ass
According to a trooper spokesman, the agency doesn’t care about winter speeds on the highway because “the Alaska State Troopers view public roadways that are in a non-maintained state as public land or public trails. We do not enforce speed limits, stop sign violations, etc when a road is not being maintained. We do enforce laws that apply to motor vehicles regardless of where they are being operated such as DUI (driving under the influence) reckless driving, negligent driving.”
Alaska attorneys say it is hard to make a charge of reckless driving, or even the lesser charge of negligent driving, stick in a case where there are no traffic laws, and it can be hard to make a case for reckless driving in Alaska even when such laws do exist.
The Alaska Court of Appeals last year overturned a state jury’s opinion that Keith Gilbert Ambacher was driving recklessly because the video in a trooper’s patrol car showed him driving down the Seward Highway at speeds up to 80 mph in a 55 mph zone with the wheels of his vehicle briefly crossing “the double yellow lines” at the start of an S-curve, “and on the subsequent righthand curve…(crossing) the fog line.”
“Although Ambacher was clearly speeding,” the justices wrote in their opinion, “nothing in the video or the trooper’s testimony indicated that Ambacher did not have full control of his vehicle, or that he endangered other people or property.
Alaska law defines reckless driving as driving “in a manner that creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to a person or to property,” and it would appear the Alaska court system has a pretty high bar for what meets the standard of not just “substantial” but also “unjustifiable risk.”
One might consider this thinking part of the “motonormativity” that has helped to drive up the death toll of both humans and animals on the country’s roadways. It is estimated a million animals per year now become road kill in the U.S. usually because drivers are going so fast they can’t stop in time when an animal steps into the roadway.
And it’s not because animals are stupid.
“The deadliest highways tend to be moderately trafficked ones. Something like 8,000 cars a day, which is not a huge volume at all, prevents animals from even trying to cross them,” David Zipper, the author of ” Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Planet, ” told Bloomberg in September.
“I’m fascinated by this idea of ‘gap acceptance,’ which is also a very human issue for pedestrians. You and I have this threshold where the cars are coming pretty quickly, but not too quickly, and we can still scamper across the city street – albeit with some risk. Animals are doing the same thing, looking for gaps between vehicles that are wide enough to move through. They really get into trouble when those gaps are wide enough to be enticing but narrow enough to still be dangerous.”
Or when the next motor vehicle coming down the road is traveling so fast it throws off their estimate as to how big the gap in the traffic. And then they die, as do pedestrians, in ever greater numbers.
Wilson at StreetsBlog noted that while pedestrian deaths overall have gone up 77 percent, night-time deaths have risen by 96 percent and “hit-and-run deaths increased 153 percent, with at least 86 percent of those deaths occurring after the sun went down.
“In 2009, 17 percent of walkers who died in America were abandoned in the street by the drivers who struck them, often delaying access to critical medical care that might have saved their lives,” she added. “In 2021, it was 24 percent. And with no one around to witness their violence, personal injury lawyers claim that fewer than 10 percent of hit-and-run drivers are ever caught.”
But then law enforcement agencies often put little or no effort into investigating hit-and-run collisions involving cyclists or pedestrians.
Four years earlier, when 38-year-old Kasey Turner was run down and killed on the same road, police blamed him. An APD spokeswoman at the time said “visibility and road conditions” were bad and explained that “Turner was partially in the roadway and not on a sidewalk, and he was wearing dark clothing.
“Pedestrians should always utilize sidewalks or keep as far away from the main road as possible,” she said, failing to note that there are no sidewalks along Brayton as is the case with many streets in Anchorage or that drivers should also have some obligation to slow down and drive carefully when the roads are slippery and visibility is bad.
Her comments did, however, well reflect a pervasive view that America’s streets are for motor vehicles and, if the worst happens, any non-motorized travelers who’ve venture there are the ones responsible for having risked their own lives.
And now there are indications this view is spreading onto Alaska’s winter trails.
Categories: Commentary, News, Outdoors
I appreciate your insightful post. It was actually pretty fun. You seem to have reached a far more agreeable level now. But how can we continue to communicate?
That rolling exit by the Denali Highway desperados really dos flag a social meltdown. Jeez r you’d think they would stick around helping the musher regroup.
“And now there are indications this view is spreading onto Alaska’s winter trails.”
Pretty small sample size to draw this conclusion.
I’d, sadly, beg to differ. There are an awful lot of winter trails in this state, and I haven’t talked to anyone who hasn’t had a close call on one of them.
This is a logical fallacy. I haven’t talked with anyone who has seen God, therefore God doesn’t exist. You have drawn a conclusion before having heard the other side of the story. Some of these articles read more like polemics against motor vehicles.
Well, that would be the case were there a God invovled, but there isn’t. There are, in this case, actual, observable, earthly vehicles invovled. If you were to try to make a valid argument here, it would be that ALL of the people I’ve talked to have been liars. That’s possible, but given that I’ve also personally witnessed all sort of close calls with idiots on snowmachines on Alaska trails, I tend to believe them.
Now, as to the most significant point in your observation, which is that I haven’t heard “the other side of the story,” I wholly agree that is a valid critcism. Unfortunately, the driver involved in the first dog deaths has failed to respond to repeated requests for an account of his side of the story, and Alaska State Troopers are refusing to identify the second driver, wihch makes it difficult to even try to get his side of the story.
Lastly, as for having anything “against motor vehicles,” all I can say is that I love them. I’ve driven snowmachines at high speeds where sensisble from here to Nome. It’s great fun. What I do have a problem with is the failure of some operators, and of the legal system, to treal motor vehicles as the potential deadly weapons they are and act accordingly when the vehicles are misused.
We should apply no more tolerance to the irresponsible use of motor vehicles than to the irresponsible use of firearms, but that is not what happens. Almost always – even if one runs a red light and kills a kid on a bicycle as has happened in Anchorage – the motor vehicle use is treated as an “accident.” This has never been the case, to my knowledge, when someone pointed a gun at another human and pulled the trigger to see if the gun was loaded, which is of course one way to find out of there is round in the chamber.
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/three-dogs-killed-in-crash-with-polaris-test-driver-in-alaska
I found this quote to be interesting. I’m sure their attorney crafted the statement.
In a statement to KARE 11, Polaris said the employee was following “safe riding protocols” at the time of the accident, including following speed limits and abiding by local regulations
Yes, especially interesting given that the official state position is that there are no speed limits.
I find no laws that cause public right of ways to waive motor vehicle laws . Nor do i find where motor vehicles can break motor vehicle laws off right of way. ( waterways are right of way in effect)
Despite the denali hwy being not plowed during winter I would think motor vehicle laws still apply.
Any law enforcement agency who doesn’t recognize that hasn’t analyzed the situation.
Alaska marine highways are not plowed. The ice being present still classifies them as a highway.
The yukon river , kuskokwim and many rivers are clearly highways some are even plowed. Those that are not are used as highways.
Many people still drive the Denali hwy with trucks all or part of winter. From what i can research-For summer its state maintained for large vehicles traffic.
Winter its maintained by mushers and a cantwell man from a grant using a large snow trac machine groomed full highway width starting sometime usually in December. Who ever knows details should say – im told its a grant partly paid by state.
Snowmobiles meet the legal definition of motor vehicle
-(Under alaska law – A motor vehicle is a vehicle that is self propelled.)- = snowmobile
Thus alaska motor vehicle law applies
13 aac state law
No person may drink intoxicating beverage while operating a motor vehicle
Every driver shall exercise care while operating a vehicle so as to not collide with a pedestrian animal or another vehicle
Thus a snowmobile operator violates the law if he doesn’t exercise care while on denali hwy
13 aac 02-
No person may drive a vehicle at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent considering the traffic roadway and weather conditions.
In this case low mobility dog teams skiers and bicycles are known to traffic on the highway every day every hour day and night. The roadway conditions require motorized reduced speed for safety due to loose snow, slick conditions and mountainous terrain.
Weather and lighting conditions are very variable in alpine Alaska . Requires reduced speed enhanced care/caution.
Its quite clear the snowmobile driver broke alaska law on an Alaska highway. He should be liable for all damages. He should be immediately cited for his lack of care , hitting an animal and excessive speed for conditions. Anything less is dereliction of duty by law enforcement.
If god forbid he hit a child or human the offender deserves prison sentence or death penalty.
We need to amend the law immediately .
It should be noted. Many trails and areas become highways in winter.
Also should be noted alaska law refers to motor vehicles and doesn’t require maintenance of said road/ highway to still have jurisdiction over motor vehicles.
Lock the offenders up!!!
When you injure someone unduly there must be legal justice or else vigilante action becomes necessary and right.
Did you find any laws or regulations that cited operating on a road or hwy. that a person may be hinderance to normal flow of traffic and thus may be subject to a citation?
Frank: There are a number of laws that might apply there, but none would appear to have much to do with this case. Most Alaska drivers – although judging from behaiviors, clearly not all – are familiar with the AS 28.35.140(b) requiring that drivers holding up more than five cars are required to pull over to let them pass. But, by law, the driver at the front of the train is only required to do so when he or she determines it is “safe” to pull over. i’d expect that almost anywhere but on four-lane roads or where there is a long “passing lane,” a driver could get away with ignoring that law with the simple statement that, “I’m sorry officer. I was looking for a safe place to pull over but I couldn’t find one.” One can argue this until the cows come home. The passing lane was too short; so too the pullouts. The edge of the road looked too rough, etc.
Then, of course, there is AS28.35.140(a) which simply bans the use of “low-speed vehicles…on a highway that has a maximum speed of more than 35 miles an hour.” But that wouldn’t apply here given that snowmachines go faster than 35 and because an LSV is specificaly definied “as a motor vehicle that (1) has four wheels; (2) can attain a speed in one mile on a paved, level surface of at least 20 miles per hour and not more than 25 miles per hour; and (3) has a gross vehicle weight rating of less than 3,000 pounds.” Those vehicles are also required to have “headlamps, tail lamps, and stop lamps; (2) front and rear turn signals; (3) red reflex reflectors on both sides and the rear; (4) an exterior mirror on the driver’s side and either an exterior mirror on the passenger side or an internal mirror; (5) a parking brake; (6) a windshield that conforms to the federal standard for glazing materials; (7) a vehicle identification number that conforms to federal standards; and (8) a seat belt meeting federal standards at each designated seating position.” The law appears primarily directed at the use of golf carts on roadways are happens in some retirement communities.
And lastly there is AS 28.35.140 (a) which covers “Unlawful Obstruction or Blocking of Traffic,” which says “a person may not purposely obstruct or block traffic on any roadway by any means. However, a service vehicle such as a bus, garbage truck, tow truck, or ambulance may make brief stops on a roadway, which stops on the roadway are necessary in the performance of its services.”
The key word there is, of course, “purposely obstruct.” Is a sled dog team going 10 mph down the Denali Highway purposely obstructing traffic or just going at the standard speed of an Alaska long distance sled dog team?
I’m not sure exactly the point of your question here. I can only guess it pertains to slow-moving dog teams getting in the way of faster moving snowmacihnes.
Dudes running back & forth on snowmachines with lodges selling beer…I could bet a dollar that alcohol was involved to some degree. It’s a shame the law protects these wealthy out of state men who come up here and destroy so much in their path. The dude is probably an employee of Polaris and they are protecting their corporate name. As for the mushers, even Jeff King in a recent ADN article points out that they need more visibility for themselves…Blinking LED’s are desperately needed for the dogs and mushers. There has been too many of these incidents over the last few years. I just had an Iron Dog team rip by me at Crystal Lake the other day…my son & I just got off our machine and were taking a break next to the trail…they were going way too fast on a trail b/w two houses. Sugar in the gas tanks will slow these dudes down!
My fear is they will hit skiers and cyclists or children.
If you can’t avoid a dog team you are driving incorrectly and putting all other trail users in danger
It means you were driving to fast for conditions which in many states is the speed limit.
You cant drive 65 on a highway during a traffic congested in a bad snowstorm.
If the law doesn’t crack down on recklessness then vigilante activities will be justified.
Recklessness for the conditions= snow ice weather, equipment type, animals humans dogs other motors ect.
Thats law precedent generally speaking and natural law .
It doesn’t matter if you are on a highway or elsewhere.
Sadly jim and Dallas should sue these reckless motorists for everything they are worth so other people’s lives get protected regardless of how “nice” these snowmobile drivers are or were.
For every accident that makes the news there are 10 that go untold.
People must use and enforce the law and judicial.
Not many skiers or children on the Denali this time of year these days, but they could hit a fat biker or more likley a stalled out snowmachiner.
Driving “too fast for conditions” used to be a common citiation in this state, but it somewhere fell out of favor. Most of the moose I’ve witnessed rundown in winter were hit by people driving “too fast for conditions.”
Some people don’t seem to understand that stopping on slippery roads eats up a lot more distance than on dry pavement or that when heading downhill on slippery roads, gravity has a big influence on braking distance.
Good coverage. If I ran sled dogs it wouldn’t be on a hwy in AK. Separate trails seems gooder.
Dog Lover. ATV hater.
The Denali Hwy is a trail November to April…buried under meters of snow
Well, sort of like the Yukon River is a “trail” in winter. Most of what we think of as “trails” don’t have sightlines nearly as good as on these Denali/Yukon “trails.”
Condolences to Mike Parker and his dogs. He is fortunate these reckless riders did not hit him (and leave him). I can not comment intelligently or professionally as my thoughts “F’ Polaris and their worthless failures of humanity test riders.”
Thank you for writing this article.
While the loss of these dogs is tragic, and in no way am I I defending the riders on the sleds that caused these horrible accidents, I have to wonder if the mushers were wearing headphones or earbuds or whatever they are called.
I frequently see hikers, runners and skiers wearing them. To me this is unwise. And maybe, just maybe, if the mushers were able to hear the machines coming before they were in eyesight something might have been done sooner to prevent this. Just a thought.
Gunner: I generally agree, but is that any worse than being half deaf like a lot of us old farts?
Ha! In my case 3/4 deaf. And I do wear hearing aids, but not while skiing.
Don’t blame the victims…It is clear the musher saw the snow machiners in a timely matter, it was the snow machiners who clearly made no efforts to slow down….like they were racing the clock for some reason.