A traffic police officer was severely injured after being thrown to the street when he was trying to stop a trailer truck on a highway passing through the north-central province of Ha Tinh on Friday.

A video capturing the horrific scene of a trailer truck running with one officer gripping its rear-view mirror was circulated on Facebook, with the Ha Tinh traffic police unit confirming the incident later the same day.

According to the footage seen by Tuoi Tre News, the trailer truck kept running for a while before swerving to the right, throwing the traffic police officer to the median strip on the left.

Tran An Ninh, from the traffic police unit of Ha Tinh police, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the officer in question is Nguyen Anh Duc, a member of his team.

Duc was among the officers on duty at a checkpoint on the National Highway 1A, passing through Can Loc District in Ha Tinh Province on Friday afternoon, according to Ninh’s account.

Seeing a trailer truck apparently breaking the speed limit, Duc stepped out and signal the vehicle to stop. However, the truck driver did not follow the request and kept speeding forward.

As he was standing right in front of the vehicle, Duc had no choice but to jump and grab the truck’s left rear-view mirror.

The container truck had traveled around 200m with the officer holding on its mirror when it made the sudden swerve, causing Duc to fall to the ground. The officer was hospitalized with critical injuries after smashing into the median strip.

In the latest development, Can Loc police announced on Saturday morning that they had arrested the truck driver, 26-year-old Luu Van Chau.

Chau confessed to police that he was so frightened after being pulled over that he had fled away and led to the injury for the police officer.

The driver

This is not the first time a Vietnamese traffic police officer has put himself in a dangerous situation when trying to pull over a vehicle.

In April, Le Quang Minh, a traffic police officer from Dong Nai Province, also hung onto the truck’s the rear-view mirror of a truck he was trying to stop and ended up being killed when the driver eventually steered his vehicle away.

It has been suggested that police choose a safer way, such as filming or noting down the license plate of the offending vehicles, instead of stepping right in front of them, even when they are traveling at a high speed.

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