Video shows car nearly hitting Kansas firefighter

Kansas Highway Patrol spokesman Trooper Tod Hileman shared a video on his Facebook page Friday to stress the importance of slowing down around the scene of an accident or fire.

“We wanted to highlight the dangers of a crash scene,” he said in his post.

The video shows emergency personnel responding to an accident on westbound I-70 in Russell County, west of Salina. The video has a date stamp of Jan. 21, 2017. Hileman points out two cars traveling east in the opposite lanes, in the upper left-hand corner of the video.

The first car slows down, Hileman said, but the second car “kept traveling through at interstate speeds.”

“The much faster car rammed into the back of the first car, shoving him into a fire unit that was in the median,” he said, as the squeal of tires can be heard on the video.

No one was hurt, he said, in this case. But in his post, he urged drivers to start slowing down before reaching an accident scene.

“Also, PLEASE pay attention to the road instead of looking to see what is going on at the scene. It might save your life or the life of someone else, like the Russell County fireman who was getting out of his truck and was almost struck by the car that was pushed into the median!”

This story was originally published January 27, 2017 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Video shows car nearly hitting Kansas firefighter."