In a small plane like that, it鈥檚 much safer to land on a field or on a meadow than on a road.
Not only for others but also for yourself.
There鈥檚 way too many obstructions around roads you can crash into before touching down on the tarmac.I dunno if you鈥檙e familiar with I-95 in the US, or Florida in general which is where this happened, but fields and meadows essentially do not exist.
And weren鈥檛 interstate highways designed partially with aircraft making emergency landings in mind? Or is that like urban legend misinformation?
They were absolutely designed with military transportation in mind. And I鈥檝e never seen powerlines or trees that crossed an interstate so I鈥檓 inclined to believe that was considered if not intended!
I wouldn鈥檛 be surprised at all if use by military aircraft was a design consideration, it鈥檚 been done in Europe, notably Sweden.
They may not have seen a better option. I鈥檓 pretty sure this is the flight in question. Which, the linked video seems to be incorrect in stating that he problem occurred soon after take-off (total flight time is just over an hour). Guessing from the flight track, it looks like they turned east to go back towards the airstrip they took off out of. They were pretty well lined up with the runway, but didn鈥檛 have the altitude to make it. Granted, they should have been looking for places to set down as they went, and it may just be that the freeway looked like the best option at the time. There is a lot of residential housing in the area they were in and the open areas seems to have a lot of tree cover. The freeway probably looked like an oasis of open ground in a sea of houses and trees.
EDIT: this is the source I used for the airplane鈥檚 tail number to look it up on flightradar24.
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