Vroom - All Systems Down

A teenager is trapped behind the wheel of a speeding SUV with a mind of its own. It’s blowing through intersections at high speed, police in hot pursuit, Mom’s on with 911… and one lone trooper has got a crazy idea. And -- when NASA loses contact with a spacecraft over 12 billion miles away, scientist Suzanne Dodd has to throw a Hail Mary. When the system crashes, when the first responders can’t respond, when you’re left all alone... what do you do? For the next four weeks, we’re sharing stories of people trying to think their way out of situations where no help is coming. And all of them are just gonna have to figure it out because this July on Snap Judgment... it's "All Systems Down." Runaway Car A teenager is trapped behind the wheel of a speeding SUV with a mind of its own. It’s blowing through intersections at high speed, police in hot pursuit, Mom’s on with 911… and one lone trooper has got a crazy idea. A huge thank you to Sam Dutcher and his mother, Catherine Johnson Dutcher, along with Minnesota State Trooper Zach Gruver for sharing their story with Snap! Very special thanks to Lieutenant Mike Lee of the Minnesota State Patrol as well. Produced by Bo Walsh, edited by Anna Sussman, original score by Renzo Gorrio. Voyager When NASA loses contact with a spacecraft over 12 billion miles away, scientist Suzanne Dodd has to throw a Hail Mary. Thank you Suzy Dodd, for sharing your story with us! Learn more about the Voyager mission. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/ Produced by John Fecile, edited by Nancy Lopez, original score by Doug Stuart. Season 17 - Episode 32 Join Snap+ https://snap.supercast.com/if you aren't already a member! Get bonus eps, an ad-free stream and more. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 1:52Glynn Washington?

  We begin in the cold for the brand new Snap Judgment Series All Systems Down. When everything is falling apart, what do you do?

• 2:03Glynn Washington?

  We're headed out to a land called Fargo, actually, West Fargo, a place where winter is coming. The roads get slick and every now and then something strange comes roaring out of the snow. But Snap, this is not just another Fargo story. This one is true. The events took place in West Fargo, North Dakota in 2024. The names have not been changed. The voices are not altered. This is how it went down. Snap Producer Bo Walsh brings us the tale. Snap Judgment.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Catherine Dutcher and her 18-year-old son Sam were out running errands on a Tuesday evening in September. She needed to pick up dinner, so Catherine asked Sam if she could drop him off at the auto repair shop to get the family car.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  We had gotten a call earlier that day that they wanted us to pick up the Honda and take it home.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Their pilot had been acting quirky, but the mechanic told Catherine that it was good to go.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  They had driven it multiple hours and a considerable amount and it was fine and nothing was found with it that it probably was okay. And it was less than 10 minutes to get to our house from there. We figured it was a very short drive and that it should be just fine.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  What could happen in 10 minutes?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Sam got behind the wheel, adjusted the seat and mirrors and pushed the power button. The engine started no problem, all systems normal. He pulled off the lot and started the 10-minute drive home.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  It was still relatively bright out. The sun was starting to go down, but it wasn't dark at all. I drive probably half a mile and there's some farmland on my right side. Left side, there's houses.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  About a mile from his parents' house, driving on a two-lane road in Cass County, the speed limit switched from forty to fifty-five. Sam accelerated, then eased off the gas.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  I backed off to fifty-five. It kept going, so then I took my foot off completely, and then it kept going. When I realized this wasn't slowing down, I was just focused on getting it stopped.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  But this Honda Pilot wasn't interested in stopping. It was speeding up.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Initially, I tried holding the brake, and then holding it and hitting the e-brake. Then I tried pumping the brakes. Then I tried putting it into neutral, and nothing happened. Then after that, I just tried park reverse, and at that point, I realized this thing's not gonna stop.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  The car's computerized system ignored everything he did. It was calling the shots. Finally, he hit the power button and held it in. The car just kept going faster.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  I'm watching the road, thinking, "I don't know what to do. I can't get it stopped." The only thing I had control over was steering.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Now moving at eighty miles per hour, Sam didn't want to take his eyes off the road to dial 911 on his phone, so he tried to place the call through voice commands.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  My phone said, "That number's not in your contacts." So I called my mom. She was in the Hardee's drive-thru. I called her.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Saying, "Hey, it's happening again."

• 6:09Speaker 03

  And when he said that it was happening again, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  The car had accelerated on its own once before. That's why they'd taken it in.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  I thought it was maybe gonna stop because it stopped very, very quickly the first time.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  You know, we talked through like, "Where are you? Can you get it to stop?"

• 6:31Speaker 04

  And then I explained to her that the brakes aren't working.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  We have a Life360 app on our phones, so I was able to look and see like where he was at and how fast he was going at that point in time.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  At that point, she knew it was only going 80. I know I can control a car at that speed.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  The car was racing east down a rural road that didn't have traffic lights in the northern Fargo area, approaching the Minnesota state line. Sam wasn't just afraid of crashing into another car or careening off the road.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  His big concern was that if a law enforcement officer were to see him, they would think that he was fleeing them.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Because on that road, I do know that there's a sheriff that drives back and forth.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  And at that point, I told him that I was gonna get off the phone and I would call 911 and notify them. So I quickly hung up and called 911 and informed them of what was going on.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Well, this is gonna sound absolutely crazy, but so we've been having problems with my car. We took it to the shop, um, because we had an incident where the accelerator stopped and it wouldn't stop. We managed to get it stopped. They had the car for like a week. They said it's just fine. Well, my son is driving the car currently because I'm in the owner car, and he is going down County 17, can't get the car to slow down or stop, and he's going about 80, 80 miles an hour.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  They probably thought I was crazy.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  He's worried they're gonna try to pull over because he can't stop, because he truly cannot. Okay, no, I understand.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  It was just so surreal that I think initially it was like, even though we knew it was happening, it felt like it was such a weird dream that I really didn't feel anything much at all other than, oh, I better like, let them know this.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Okay, it looks like we did let an officer, my partner here, let an officer in the area know already. So I'm gonna advise you to not call your son back in case our, we here try to get ahold of him, or the officer tries to call him directly to give him directions, okay?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  My mom called me back. She wasn't supposed to, but she did.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  I called them very briefly, just to explain, they're calling you, they're gonna tell you what to do, you need to answer them. And basically said I loved him and I hung up because I didn't want to interfere with their call, but I also wanted him to know that it's very important that you do answer them.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Saying goodbye was kinda scary in the sense of, I didn't know what was happening next.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  So we found 90th Avenue crossing through the street north?

• 9:21Speaker 05

  Ten four, eastbound 90th Avenue, crossing at 60th. I'll tap one in place for...

• 9:27Speaker 02

  The pilot was now on 90th Avenue, the straightest road in the area.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  It was pretty quiet, for the most part. There were a few cars, but it's not a big roadway. It was just beat trucks, pretty much all around the road. Some of them semis.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  But it was only two lanes. And soon Sam started to overtake cars and trucks that were going much slower than him.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  It's really narrow, only wide enough for two cars. People realized, something's not right.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  A lot of it, there was a good chunk of oncoming traffic, so I was passing on the shoulder. Not nicely by any means, but it was enough for him to get around the vehicle. That was scary because going around on the shoulder where it's pretty much loose gravel, the tire started spinning in those extractions.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  The only thing to his right off of the shoulder were 20-foot ditches.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  It was terrifying because those ditches were steep, so I would have just rolled. Not pleasant.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  The pilot was now going over 90 miles per hour, and every maneuver put Sam at risk of losing control.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  There's a turn there that wasn't nice to make at that speed. I was really close to spinning out there. It is difficult to keep the wheel straight at that speed. I was really tensed up.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  My hands were locked on that wheel, not really letting go of it. As long as I kept controlling the vehicle and didn't spin out.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Catherine Dutcher had given her son's cellphone number to the 911 operator, who transmitted it from the dispatch center.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  10-4, just advising, I also attempted to call Sam.

• 11:33Speaker 06

  I'm on the phone.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  10-4.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Within moments, Sam was on the phone with a Clay County deputy.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  He asked me, "Hey, did you try hitting the power button? Did you try the e-brake?"

• 11:49Speaker 06

  10-4, the e-brake, yeah, it doesn't work either.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  "Did you try neutral?", which the answer to all those was yes.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  I had him try and shift it to neutral, uh, drive it, and I'm driving also. It's a push button to stop it, but it's uh not allowing it to do it or turn it off.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  After he went through those steps, I think he might have been a little stumped on like what to do next.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  Thirty seventy, Adam, try to hit that e-brake and it won't do anything. Correct, e-brake doesn't do anything. He said it's slowing down, about two miles an hour, but that's it. Um, and like I said, he just needs to do a drill or get the power off.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  I could hear like the resonance of the radio and that buzz that the radio makes. I didn't like that, that they were going back and forth.

• 12:42Speaker 06

  Thirty seven, how much gas does he have left? That's thirty four miles an hour.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  I knew it was, was very serious. It's to the point where it's not just one or two officers. It's multiple and they're trying to figure out what they want to do about it and really, I didn't think they exactly knew what to do in this situation because this stuff doesn't happen very often.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  My only thought was like, if no one can get this car to stop, if he can't, you know, do emergency brakes, if he can't turn it off, if he can't jam it, how in the world are they going to get this car to stop? I had hoped that it'd be like kind of a replay of that very first brief situation where it was able to just be stopped quickly. So I think on some level like my denial kicked in and then it's like, well, you know, this, this will probably be okay. They'll figure out what to do.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  As Sam blew through the intersection at highway seventy five, the officers on the radio moved on to the next option.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  They told me directly, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put spike strips out and you're going to drive over it to pop the tires.

• 14:07Speaker 06

  And then let him know I'm going to push thick though. Um, we pick the tires up. So that should slow him down and make sure he hits something else.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  When those tires pop, you, you lose traction and most of the time we'll spin out.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Like even if just one blew at that speed.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  But first, someone would need to get ahead of Sam to lay down the strips with metal spikes.

• 14:31Speaker 07

  I'm gonna try to get the stick filter, but I don't think I'm gonna get there in time.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  What I was told on the phone was, "We can't do that. We can't get far enough ahead of you."

• 14:45Glynn Washington?

  No brakes on this ride, Snapers. How long can Sam keep his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel? Find out when Snap Judgment returns.

• 15:00Speaker 01

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• 15:33Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Vroom. From Snap Judgment's All Systems Down, before the break, Sam Dutcher picked up his family's Honda Pilot from the repair shop. He was supposed to drive it home, but then the car started accelerating on its own. The brakes were not working, the car would not shut off. And now, with police racing to catch up, Sam is trapped behind the wheel of a vehicle that keeps gaining speed. Snap Judgment.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  It's going to be a 2022 Honda Pilot, white in color, going about 80 miles per hour. The complainant's son is going to be the one driving, reaching speeds of 90 to 100 miles per hour. Cannot slow down.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Shortly after 5:00 PM, Minnesota State Trooper Zach Grover was on his way to turn in a receipt for an oil change he'd gotten earlier that day on his department-issued Dodge Charger, when he heard the dispatcher relay the call on the radio.

• 16:33Speaker 06

  We're right on the border of Fargo and Morehead, so North Dakota, Minnesota. So, I was about 20 miles into Minnesota. It was kind of just a, "Hey, we've got a runaway car, and it's coming into Minnesota."

• 16:46Speaker 07

  Can you see if Becker or anybody would be in the area? Hopefully help us on the county line if we get there.

• 16:52Speaker 06

  Hey, I'm about 20 miles in front of this thing, and probably about 7 or 8 miles to the east of kind of the next major intersection that that car's coming at. So I figured I can go a little bit faster than 80 miles an hour with my lights and sirens on, and we'll see if I can get up there and get the spike strips set down.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  He wasn't gonna bother to ask anyone if he should get involved.

• 17:18Speaker 06

  Our policy states that we have to be requested, but then, you know, something like this is kind of a, it poses a very major traffic safety issue, when you've got a car that can't stop going through intersections at 80 miles an hour. So, it really does kind of become a life and death thing, because if, you know, you get T-boned at 80 miles an hour, it's not gonna be good.

• 17:44Speaker 07

  (inaudible)

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Grover hit the gas and came up Highway 9, but couldn't quite get to the intersection ahead of Sam. He saw the lights of Cass County Police Cars in pursuit of the pilot zoom by as he approached from the south.

• 18:05Speaker 06

  I hadn't seen Sam go by, I just saw the red and blues go by. So at that point, it was kind of just a race to who was gonna get to the intersection faster.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  The officers were driving larger cars, Chevy Tahos.

• 18:21Speaker 06

  They were doing about 80 miles an hour. That's not gonna really work. And then that's kind of when it switched in my head, like, okay, we're gonna get, try to get in front of them.

• 18:34Speaker 07

  Got a trooper behind you and then you got one of the clay deputies. We're gonna try to send that trooper in front to get some sticks out.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Grover's Charger had a 300 horsepower engine and could go a lot faster than the Tahos. So he came up behind them and floored it.

• 18:53Speaker 06

  Once we got up to the road that they were on, I believe it took me about a minute to catch up to the Cass County Deputy.

• 19:01Speaker 07

  3568, I mean, coming around, if you want to give me some room.

• 19:05Speaker 06

  My top speed on that road was around 130.

• 19:08Speaker 07

  290, Cass County Deputy, I'm coming up on your left to pass.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  And then I went around him and that was kind of the, the moment where it's like, there's no car here. Where is this car?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  When he passed the other officers in the left lane, the pilot was nowhere to be found. Sam was going so fast that he had pulled away from the police cars in pursuit. Grover went as fast as the Charger would let him.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  You know, just kind of go and pedal to the metal and I could see taillights up ahead. And then finally, when I was able to, I hit my front radar. And once I was able to get a speed on him, he was doing 113 and it was kind of like a, oh. Okay, he's, he's not doing 80 miles an hour.

• 19:54Speaker 07

  37, still on the phone with him.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  I saw in my mirrors, the red and blue flashing lights. Knowing they were there definitely brought a little bit of peace of mind because it means that they have caught up to me.

• 20:08Speaker 07

  290, you get in front of him, man. I'm right behind him, we're in the hills, I don't want to pass. We're doing 113.

• 20:15Speaker 06

  He was quite a ways ahead of me, so I really wasn't directly behind him for very long.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  I remember him going around me on the side, the lights on.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  At that point, I passed him just before we got into the town of Hitterdall.

• 20:30Speaker 07

  290, in front of him, we're just getting city, Hitterdall.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Before he could think about getting far enough ahead of Sam to drop the stop sticks, Gruver realized they were coming up on the intersection with Highway 32 in the town of Hitterdall.

• 20:46Speaker 07

  That's a very busy intersection. Might be worth you shooting in front of him and just blocking that so it can continue straight through it.

• 20:53Speaker 06

  It turned from like, uh, we're gonna get in front of him and put sticks down to, I need to get up there and block this intersection so he doesn't T-bone a car coming through at 113.

• 21:01Speaker 07

  37 there, Clay County, 97 north, 53 eastbound, 90 miles an hour, no brakes.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what was gonna happen next. But what I did know was, up until the end of the road, or until I lost control, it was gonna continue driving.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  By now, the sun had set. Visibility was getting worse. To further complicate things, Sam was headed for an intersection where the oncoming cross traffic didn't have a stop sign.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  It's an uncontrolled intersection going north and south. After you go through that intersection is a set of railroad tracks that's pretty frequently blocked by trains.

• 21:46Speaker 07

  Central Copy, just advising, they're going through stop signs eastbound along 90th Avenue.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Sam barreling east could potentially T-bone another vehicle at high speed.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  I mean, my thought wasn't what's safest for me. It's what's safest for other drivers. I was honestly more worried about hurting other people than myself. I would have thrown the vehicle off the side of the road before I would have let it hit anyone.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Gruver slowed down at the intersection with his lights flashing to stop the cross traffic on the highway.

• 22:29Speaker 06

  I felt like I had a pretty good distance on him and was like, okay, we can get here, get this intersection blocked, and then he just kinda came out of nowhere.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Kinda take a deep breath, cause of those cars on the side of the road, I don't have a lot of room.

• 22:44Speaker 06

  He was doing at least 112 miles an hour through that intersection.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Very scary because it's so speed that if you make one mistake, things will go wrong.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was kind of a oh crap moment, just watching him go flying by.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  I remember I had to swerve around a car stop sign.

• 23:08Speaker 06

  And he had to do a pretty good jerk around me just so he didn't rear end me, thankfully. So, kind of had a bit of a win there.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  I felt relieved that I got past there, but I also didn't know what was ahead.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Sam's pilot flew by Grover in a blur, but now the officer had to catch up and pass Sam again.

• 23:32Speaker 06

  He was a ways in front of me, but I don't think it took me too horribly long to get caught back up to him. Kind of a minute or so, I was able to just put the pedal to the floor and go. My max speed was 141 miles an hour.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Grover was still on the radio with the Clay County deputies. One who was on the phone with Sam and another who was also driving their next closest car in pursuit.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  As the officer spoke, they crossed from Clay County into Becker County and realized that they had about three or four miles before the paved road would end.

• 24:18Speaker 06

  7124, just so you're aware, once you get into Becker County, Becker County 14.

• 24:26Speaker 06

  T's on, got Tony 7, used to hit it all, T intersection. The pavement came to a T and then on the other side of the T was a gravel road. And once that gravel road ended, it turns into a dirt field.

• 24:43Speaker 06

  But it was slightly offset from the gravel.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  I kept glancing over the GPS map. That road ended. I knew this road's going to a T. What's gonna happen?

• 24:57Speaker 06

  Doing 113 on the gravel would have been scary enough, and I don't think he would have been able to negotiate that, that little curve.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  It was a steep slope at the end that I would just crash into.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  It was becoming a race against the clock. And three to four miles wasn't a lot of ground to cover going speeds of more than 100 miles per hour.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  After watching him go through, hit it all, it was, we're gonna have to be a ways ahead of him to be able to get out and get those stop sticks down.

• 25:31Speaker 07

  You got about four miles and that's gonna T. So if he can get you in front of it, slow down, do it now, otherwise we're just gonna have to see what happens.

• 25:39Speaker 06

  I knew I wasn't gonna have time to, you know, stop my squad, get out of my squad, run to the trunk, get my stop sticks down and get them thrown out on the ground.

• 25:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, 10-4, I think. We're not gonna be able to get six. He's going too fast.

• 25:53Speaker 06

  So it was kind of, it shifted from putting stop sticks down to

• 25:59Speaker 06

  how else can we get this car stopped?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  18-year-old Sam Dutcher knew the road ahead of him was coming to an end, and the cops would not be able to drop the spike strips to slow him down. And his car was still gaining speed.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  It was slowly accelerating.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  I think it topped off at 125. Not a nice speed to drive at. It was almost like a roller coaster. That's the closest I can compare it to. Controlling it got difficult because I was starting to get tired. It was just that my brain was rushing, just pumping adrenaline. I started questioning, how much longer can I keep doing this?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Sam was deep into this nightmare. One slight jerk of the steering wheel, one little pothole on the road, and anything could happen.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  Heard some medics that way. Medics in Raleigh, Illinois.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  My thought was, there's no way I'm making it through this. I-I'm-I'm-I'm gonna die. I prayed, saying, "Please let me make this, through this."

• 27:15Speaker 02

  He tried to stay focused on the road, and not imagine the worst.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  I don't feel there was really room to think about what could happen. I-I just needed to focus on what is going on and staying in control. Because if I start focusing on other things, there's a good chance at that speed, you are losing control and dying. I was just in a state of mind of, "This is what's going on. I need to deal with this right now. Nothing else right now really matters."

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Back at home, his mother Catherine was trying to get updates from the 911 operator.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  I'm the same mom that called about my kids just a little bit ago. Okay, here it is, the reckless driver. Oh, right, except his accelerator sucks. Oh, okay.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  It was scary knowing that I, like, couldn't be there. And, so, I called just to follow up and, like, "Do you guys know where the officers are at? Have they found them? Have they been able to do anything? What-what are they doing?" So it was more of a sense of me wanting to know what happened.

• 28:32Speaker 05

  They're-they're on the phone with him now. We have officers from all over and medical all coming to him, okay? Okay, and my husband and I are driving off, aren't we? Yes, I can-I can understand. It's gotta be extremely stressful. We have, but they are talking with him directly, okay? So they're trying to help him get this taken care of. In the safest way possible and we've got officers and troopers and all sorts of people going towards him, okay? Okay, okay.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  And when they said that, I think that was the first time I really panicked and thought like, oh my God, I think my kid's gonna die. The whole idea of that they had all these people going towards him made me feel like they were anticipating the worst and planning for it.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  We've got people that are getting there as fast as they can. I know. All right? Okay. Okay, we're all keeping our fingers crossed for him.

• 29:34Speaker 05

  Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  I felt pretty sick to my stomach. It felt like time was so slow. I had to just sit and wait and trust that they were doing everything that they could do.

• 29:49Speaker 07

  We are 300 streets from sitting Becker County, 97th Avenue North.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Out on the road, it was time for a desperate last ditch effort to prevent a tragedy.

• 30:01Speaker 06

  At 113 miles an hour, we had about 53 seconds before we hit the tee. We were not far. We were running out of time, we were running out of road and running out of options.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  The first option was to do a pursuit intervention technique, a pit, where officers chasing vehicles will niche the other car from behind to make it spin out. But Grover doubted it could be done on such a narrow road at speeds in excess of 113 miles per hour.

• 30:29Speaker 06

  We don't train at those speeds, so it was kind of just a, we don't really know what's gonna happen. And obviously, you know, we don't want to try to do a pit on him and then have him go into the ditch sideways and roll a bunch of times, because that's, I would, I would say that's just as dangerous as him going off the tee at 113 and seeing what happens.

• 30:57Speaker 07

  Do you have any other ideas I could make before we hit that tee?

• 31:02Speaker 06

  Getting out in front of it and trying that route. We were kind of just radioing things. So it was kind of a, you know, we're all talking through each other. Copy. State units go to LTAC once. Everybody's on the same channel. We were bouncing ideas off of each other just to kind of try to see what we could get done.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  704, what do you think? We'll just watch him.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Van Gruver had an idea.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  Just get in front of him and kind of match his speed. Let him kind of just make soft contact and just ride the brakes down to, till we got stopped.

• 31:36Speaker 07

  290, if that's your plan, you don't have much room left before 14, so if you can do it, go for it.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  There was kind of a little bit of a thought of, obviously I'm, I'm driving a, kind of a mid-sized car and he's in a larger SUV. So, you know, if he starts pushing me, we go sideways into the ditch. This probably isn't gonna end the best.

• 31:57Speaker 07

  290, I'm gonna be pulling up next. Yeah, I'll try to get in front of you and add a little extra brake power.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Gruver doing about 130 miles per hour, got ahead and passed Sam.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  I noticed him going in front of me. I didn't know what he was doing.

• 32:13Speaker 06

  I was in front of Sam. I started slowing down and it hadn't been relayed to Sam yet to run into the back of me.

• 32:21Speaker 07

  37 still on the phone with him?

• 32:24Speaker 04

  I didn't know what was going on because they never told me, hey, this is what we want you to do. In my mindset at the time, it was, he, he just pulled in front of me. Oh shoot, I don't want to hit him, so I'll go around him.

• 32:52Speaker 07

  290, you want him to go into the back of your car? So I'll have 37 tell.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  He actually gets up next to me and it was kind of at that moment where it was like a, uh oh.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  You know, if he gets in front of me, I don't know if I'm gonna get back in front of him.

• 33:09Speaker 07

  Thirty-seven, have him go in the back of this car.

• 33:13Speaker 07

  Two-nine, you wanted me to be in contact with you and you'd fall?

• 33:19Speaker 04

  We were kinda neck and neck, both speeding up.

• 33:24Speaker 06

  Do we have them on the phone, that's in the car?

• 33:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got the driver on the phone here.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  The deputy on the phone with Sam told him what the plan was.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  He told me, "So, I want you to hit the car that's gonna pull up in front of you." "You want me to..." What? I repeated that to him. "So, you want me to hit the cop car that's pulling in front of me?" "That's not something I really care to do." "My thought was this could not end well."

• 33:56Speaker 06

  He's going to allow the person to hit him in the back.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  Once I got in front of him and started slowing down, something started to slow the car down as well.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  It was weird because collision automatic braking started kicking on, I think. It felt like we were probably slowed down to eighty. The vehicle was making itself engine brake. Why did every other safety feature on this vehicle fail? But that one worked. It was kind of a, "Okay, hey, this is going really well." And we were slowing down, slowing down, slowing down, and he wasn't hitting me. And I was kinda thinking, "Hey, this might actually work."

• 34:49Glynn Washington?

  I think the forward collision isn't letting him hit me. We're slowing down.

• 34:54Speaker 07

  It didn't work.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  I was starting to think, "Hey, it's not gonna hit the vehicle. That's nice." I was watching him in my driver's side mirror.

• 35:06Speaker 07

  I'm like, okay, he's, he's, you know, he's coming up, but he's not hitting me.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  He was really close. I remember seeing the back of his car.

• 35:14Speaker 07

  We're slowing down and I think I was down to about 20 miles an hour and I lost his headlight in the driver's side mirror.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  It felt like time slowed down and then smack.

• 35:29Speaker 07

  If, uh, hold him, hold him. When he hit me, I think that I was doing about 20 miles an hour and once he hit me, I just dynamited the brakes. First stop.

• 35:42Speaker 07

  After he hit me, we came to a pretty immediate stop. My squad was enough to just keep his car from moving still.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  I was just sitting there, frozen kind of in shock, when they came to my passenger side door, opened it up, saying, get out of the car. The wheels were still spinning when I got out. It was still running, trying to go. Are we good?

• 36:11Speaker 07

  I've never been rear-ended before. I know my head smacked the headrest and it was a pretty good jolt.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  That hit hard. That was like, it was slowing down, slowing down, and then it wasn't. Yeah, I'm glad you guys were in the area. It's a good thing we had a charger. I don't know. I mean, he was doing. I was going 113. When I caught up to him, he was, yeah, 114.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  724, did you say that the vehicle stopped?

• 36:41Speaker 07

  Both four cars stopped. Call medics and clear. We're, we're good.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  I got out of the car, then I went and sat on the grass and ju- just sat there and, and just kind of zoned out for

• 37:02Speaker 04

  I don't know how long. My brain kind of just broke. I was kind of just in a sensory overload.

• 37:09Speaker 07

  He was cool, calm, and collected. He was kind of just standing in the ditch.

• 37:15Speaker 04

  Grover will say I was calm.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say it was calm.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  I'd say I shut down, but I'm part of that also. I'm on the spectrum, so don't really show

• 37:40Speaker 04

  emotions as much. I mean, I was in the mindset of, I want to go home. I want to go to bed. I want my day to be over.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  He called me himself when they got the vehicle stopped and he got out and he's like, Mom, I'm out of the car. I'm okay. And then I just wanted to see him to know it was actually like real. I mean, it was amazing, but it also felt like it wasn't real. I was like, how could you like run into the back of a lot first, but care at the speed that you're going to get stopped and not even be injured? Like, it didn't make any real sense till I actually saw him. I was like, God, like, you know, thank you, God, for not killing my kid. Thank you for keeping him safe.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  It felt like a miracle, very much so.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  It's kind of a sigh of relief, knowing that we were able to get it stopped and not have to watch him,

• 38:43Speaker 02

  you know, go off of a T at 113 miles an hour. You don't really realize kind of what you did until after the fact and it's kind of like, okay, this is like, this is pretty cool. So when you got home that night, did you tell your wife what happened? Absolutely not.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  The thing that I was even more floored about that I found out that next week during this whole thing was that his wife was like, seriously pregnant at the time, ready to give birth to his very first son and to think about that he put his life on the line to save my son, knowing that he had his first son on the way. Like, that was even more like amazing to me.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  I remember him walking up to me, stuck it out his hand like he was gonna shake my hand. And I'm like, seriously, could I hug you? I mean, you saved my kid's life. I don't really feel like a handshake is like doing justice.

• 40:03Glynn Washington?

  A huge thank you to Sam Dutcher and his mother Catherine Johnson Dutcher, along with Minnesota State Trooper Zach Gruver for sharing their story with the SNAP. Sam is currently a student at the North Dakota State College of Science, where he's studying to become an auto mechanic. Very special thanks to Lieutenant Mike Lee of the Minnesota State Patrol as well. The original score for that piece was by Renzo Goryeo, was edited by Anna Sussman, was produced by Bo Walsh.

• 40:41Glynn Washington?

  After the break, we're blasting off to outer space. Stay tuned.

• 41:11Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to the Vroom episode from SNAP's All Systems Down series. My name's Glenn Washington. Next up, how do you solve a problem that is 12 billion miles away? A lot of us think we're the center of the universe, like Glenn Washington, for instance, thinks he's the center of the universe. But actually, here, I'm here

• 41:31Speaker 06

  The center of the universe, where all the data comes in from all the spacecraft.

• 41:40Glynn Washington?

  Not too long ago, we decided to launch Snap Judgment producer John Facile into outer space, at least as close to outer space as possible.

• 41:50Speaker 06

  I'm in a room above Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, looking down on, you know, like what you imagine Mission Control in movies. I don't know why I'm whispering. I feel like I need to whisper while I'm up here.

• 42:05Glynn Washington?

  John went to NASA's West Coast Brain Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, to talk to scientist Suzanne Dodd.

• 42:12Speaker 06

  What are your worst fears on this job? Like, what keeps you up at night?

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Um, that's pretty easy, actually. My, for Voyager, my worst fear is we send a bad command, and it ends the life of a spacecraft.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  This is over here, just full-scale model.

• 42:36Speaker 06

  Suzy Dodd is showing me a model of the Voyager spacecraft. It takes up half of one side of this auditorium, about the size of an RV. It's got a squat metal body with a white satellite dish on top, and two metal arms hung with all kinds of electronic equipment.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  This is over here. These are all the pointing instruments, so cameras, ultraviolet spectrometers.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  And the golden record is really mounted on the side here like this?

• 43:06Speaker 05

  And the gold part is actually a cover.

• 43:09Speaker 06

  There are two Voyager spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and each of them has a golden record, like a vinyl record, with recordings of greetings in different languages and a selection of music. Everything from Bach to Chuck Berry. It's an audio postcard to any aliens who might encounter these spacecraft on their long journey across the cosmos.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Jupiter and Saturn. These giant planets and the moons surrounding them will be looked at close up by two 1,800-pound ...spacecraft loaded with cameras and scientific instruments. A mission that allows scientists to go back in time. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 and sent out on their own to explore the outer planets of our solar system, places we'd never been able to send a probe before. And Susie Dodd has been with them almost her whole career.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  You know, I like to describe them as twin sisters. At launch, they were identical, but over the years, different things have broken on them. And so, one doesn't have very good hearing, the other one lost its sense of touch. They're my parents, grandparents. I think of them as senior citizens, yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 05

  You want them to have a good, full life.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Good morning, and welcome to the 5 o'clock edition of Voyager Update. I'm your host, Suzanne Dodd. At 5 o'clock AM Pacific Daylight Time, Voyager is 510,000 kilometers, or 317,000 miles, above the swirling cloud tops of Neptune.

• 44:51Speaker 06

  Susie joined the Voyager program when she was just out of college. It was the late 80s, and the Voyagers had accomplished nearly everything they'd set out to do. They visited and collected data from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and their last stop, the last planet in our solar system, was Neptune, almost 3 billion miles away. And Susie led the team of scientists, sending commands via satellite to Voyager 2 as it flew by the icy blue planet and took pictures.

• 45:27Speaker 06

  You're in the first group of people to see any images of Neptune.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  Absolutely. That's what makes it the best. There was a giant blue spot, similar to Jupiter's giant red spot. This was a blue spot, a big storm.

• 45:43Speaker 06

  A hurricane the size of Earth.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  One of my favorite pictures is actually when we were leaving Neptune, and we turned around and looked at the planet, and it's the crescent of Neptune with the crescent of...

• 45:56Speaker 06

  Trident. So you've got the blue Neptune crescent, and then you also have the brownish-orange sort of crescent of its moon.

• 46:06Speaker 06

  After Neptune, the Voyager mission was technically over, and the scientists at JPL partied.

• 46:15Speaker 06

  I distinctly remember Chuck Berry on the steps right here at JPL playing Johnny B. Goode live after the Neptune flyby.

• 46:29Speaker 06

  The Voyagers were still going, heading deeper into space, sending back their data. NASA expected them to freeze or run out of power, but that didn't happen, which was kind of a miracle. And then, after two decades of essentially being on NASA's backburner, the Voyagers did something truly unprecedented. In the 2010s, they both crossed out of the solar system, cruising past the edge of the protective magnetic bubble provided by our sun and into interstellar space, that mostly empty space between our solar system and all the others in the Milky Way.

• 47:11Speaker 06

  By that time, Susie had returned to the Voyagers as project manager.

• 47:17Speaker 06

  Voyager's a trailblazer, right? It's going out, away from us. It's never coming back. We want to get to the farthest reaches that we can, so we understand how our star interacts with all the stardust that's outside of it.

• 47:36Speaker 06

  The Voyagers measure the strength of the magnetic field, the energy of galactic rays. The density of plasma, which is this sea of electrified particles created by stars sloshing around in space. It records variations in the density of plasma onto a magnetic tape recorder. And when you play back the tape, it sounds like this.

• 48:09Speaker 06

  The Voyagers are sending back to Earth a near-continuous stream of precious information about how space changes the further you get away from our Sun. And Susie's job is to keep them going. So basically, the only commands you can send to these are like on/off? Yes, exactly. Okay. And we've turned off... Because the nuclear generators that fuel the Voyagers are losing power bit by bit each year, Susie's team has had to turn off most of their instruments, like the cameras. They turned off their heaters.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  It's very cold where they are. They were never designed to work with their heaters off, but that has happened. We've been, you know, this is another miracle of Voyager. They're living on borrowed time to some degree. I wouldn't want to be the project manager or a team member that let a bad command slip through.

• 49:05Speaker 06

  So I believe it was July 21st, 2023?

• 49:10Speaker 05

  2020, yeah. I hear about it from our team. This is happening. It should be talking to us now, and it's not.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  On July 21st, 2023, Susie's team sent a command to Voyager 2, telling it to turn its satellite dish two degrees towards Earth.

• 49:31Speaker 05

  We have to keep Voyager's antenna pointed at the Earth. Over time, it drifts slightly. It will drift off point. We're sending a pretty simple type of command saying, move it two steps back toward the center.

• 49:48Speaker 06

  But two days later, on July 23rd, the stream of data coming in from Voyager 2 went silent.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  Susie tried to stay calm as they ran through potential issues. Maybe the problem was coming from home base and was easy to fix.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  Maybe our ground data software is offline or something like that. So you have to rule out all the things on the ground. But once you do that, then there's only one thing that can be the problem, which is the spacecraft.

• 50:17Speaker 06

  The spacecraft Voyager 2 that was over 12 billion miles away.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Once you know that it's the spacecraft that's not sending us data, then you need to start trying to determine

• 50:29Speaker 06

  Why it's not sending.

• 50:34Speaker 06

  And when they retraced their steps, they found a problem in the last command they'd sent to Voyager two days earlier, telling it to turn its satellite dish two degrees towards Earth. Once you looked at that command string, we knew exactly what happened. Somebody had put the wrong number of degrees in the command. Instead of moving the antenna back toward the center, it sent it the other way. So it was even further off. Instead of bringing it back to the Earth, we pointed it more away from us. It was a typo. A typo had taken out contact with Voyager 2. It's bad. I mean, it's really bad. You've put so much time and energy in this.

• 51:19Speaker 06

  Even though they were still in contact with Voyager 1, Susie knew this could be the end of the entire mission. There's a domino. You messed up. Well, you need to change all your processes. If Susie and her team couldn't reestablish contact with Voyager 2, they'd be subject to intense scrutiny. You know, having extra sets of eyes, developing new processes to do checks for you, those all cost money. We'll just stop the Voyager mission.

• 51:48Speaker 06

  And then you would have to go out and talk to people like me and say, Voyager's over. That would be your responsibility. Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 06

  Decades of mind-blowing science, billions of dollars, humanity's only connection to interstellar space, over, finished, because of a typo. Do you know who sent the command? Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of people that have the blame for the error. Were you angry? Yeah. What's Susie angry look like? You should ask my husband.

• 52:28Speaker 06

  When an anomaly happens like this, everybody is... All in and trying to get it fixed, right? It's not a blame immediately. The blame comes later. There was no time to waste. Every minute, Voyager 2 hurtled over 500 miles further away from Earth.

• 52:49Speaker 06

  Susie and her team turned to the Deep Space Network, the DSN, a network of satellite dishes spread across the globe. The DSN can work miracles, almost. The DSN scanned the skies for any sign of life. 10 days passed before they finally heard something. Something called carrier signals, which are radio waves without any information on those radio waves.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  The faintest heartbeat, coming all the way from Voyager 2. It's giving us this frequency tone, which was somewhat relieving because it means, OK, the spacecraft is still operating. But they couldn't talk back. Now, because of where Voyager 2 is flying relative to the Earth, there's only one satellite dish on Earth that can talk to it. It's in Australia, outside Canberra. The Canberra dish is humongous, right? 70 meters in diameter. Which is like a couple of buildings. It fits inside the Rose Bowl. A Rose Bowl-sized satellite dish, trying to talk to Voyager 2's dish, which is about the size of a hot tub,

• 54:01Speaker 06

  and all the way across the chasm of space. Susie and her team, sweating this out in a conference room at JPL, don't have a lot of options. So we said, let's do the shout. What if they marshaled all of the Canberra dish's energy, 100 kilowatts, enough to power an office building?

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Put it into one, single, powerful signal. A shout across space.

• 54:31Speaker 07

  I would call it more of a blast than a shout. You can think of James Bond movies where they're like giant lasers, you know, shooting down satellites or something like that. It's akin to a laser, but it's not optical. It's radio. I mean, you're just, you're just putting lots and lots of power to send a signal with as much energy as possible toward Voyager.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Extra loud?

• 54:55Speaker 07

  Yes, extra loud, exactly.

• 54:59Speaker 06

  So Susie and her team load up the new command to reverse the typo and tell Voyager 2 to point its dish back towards Earth.

• 55:08Speaker 07

  You better believe we had like 10 people review the command, make sure it was correct this time.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  And then they send out this blast that goes roaring through space in search of Voyager 2. Because Voyager 2 is so far away, they have to wait two days before they know anything.

• 55:31Speaker 06

  Now, what are those two days like for you where you're waiting?

• 55:34Speaker 07

  You're planning on what happens if it doesn't go correctly. Plan B options, basically.

• 55:40Speaker 06

  But it sounds like there really wasn't a Plan B.

• 55:42Speaker 07

  There wasn't an easy Plan B, for sure. Do I get stressed? I do get stressed, yes.

• 55:50Speaker 06

  What do you do to deal with stress?

• 55:51Speaker 07

  I go swimming.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  Susie is a lifelong swimmer. The pool is where she goes to empty her mind, or try to, anyway.

• 56:04Speaker 07

  There's some aspect of going back and repeating through your mind decisions that were made and did you make the correct decision for the information you had?

• 56:14Speaker 06

  I'm imagining you swimming, you know, and just asking yourself these questions over and over. Is that something that you do?

• 56:19Speaker 07

  I do that sometimes. I try not to run into the wall.

• 56:25Speaker 06

  Two weeks had gone by since they first lost contact with Voyager 2. But then, at 12:29 a.m. on August 4th, a familiar voice reached the DSN satellite ears with news about plasma, galactic rays, and the magnetic fields in interstellar space.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  It was Voyager 2. The shout had worked. And how did that feel?

• 56:52Speaker 07

  Very relieving. Very relieving. I was still mad. I was still mad we had done it, but I was relieved that we were able to recover the spacecraft.

• 57:04Speaker 06

  Against all expectations, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still out there, over 13 billion miles away, and they're still talking to us. They're the most distant man-made objects and the oldest spacecraft still in operation.

• 57:22Speaker 07

  Voyager will be gone in five, six years. We'll either run out of power or we'll freeze. That's going to be the end of it. How are you going to feel when it's over?

• 57:35Speaker 07

  I think it's going to be a mixture of sad but proud. This mission will be more than a half-century old, and it definitely bookends my career because I started on Voyager. My career will definitely end on Voyager. So I have a life outside of work, but it'll be an adjustment.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  You'll kind of... both be kind of drifting off into space a little bit.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  I'm not expecting any aliens to contact me after I retire, though. They'll probably contact Voyager first.

• 58:45Glynn Washington?

  In 2027, The Voyager mission will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Thank you, Suzy Dodd, for sharing that story with us, and special thanks to Ginny Lewis. The song you're hearing, "The Voyager," is from her album of the same name.

• 59:09Glynn Washington?

  Special thanks as well to the team at JPL and Keith Caleremi. The original score for this piece was by Doug Stewart. The story was produced by John Facio.

• 59:26Glynn Washington?

  That was just the start of Snap's All Systems Down series. There is more on the way, and so you don't miss a moment, make sure that the Snap Judgment podcast is on your phone device and Snap Plus is now available. Subscribe for bonus Snap episodes every month and a special ad-free stream, Snap meetups, and more. Snap Plus at snapjudgment.org. KQED in San Francisco is Snap's Orbiting Hall of Justice on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51.

• 1:00:07Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that comes to a full stop at each and every stop sign, except for the Uber user, Mr. Mark Ristich, who believes that traffic signs are traffic suggestions. And this is Nancy Lopez, Pat McCDillan, Anna Sussman, Renzo Gorial, John Facio, Sheena Shealy, Kaila DeCott, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge. And this is not the news. No way this is the news. In fact, your car could develop a mind of its own and insist on driving you and a cold six-pack to the beach every Friday when you're supposed to be at work. Bad car. And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is. P R

• 1:00:52Glynn Washington?

  X