Another driver reports falling ice along I-15

LAYTON, Utah — A Layton man is asking the Utah Department of Transportation to make safety improvements after a chunk of ice crashed through his windshield.

Scott Lasater was heading north in Layton when he says that chunk burst through on his passenger side.

Luckily, no one was sitting there.

He’s worried, though, that it could turn out a whole lot worse for someone else the next time.

It was a typical drive. No sign of trouble around 3 p.m.

“I was in the HOV lane,” Lasater said.

Lasater said he had no warning as he passed under the HOV sign near Antelope Drive.

“There was apparently a whole bunch of snow and ice on that pole behind the sign. It fell off as I was under,” he said. “No way to prepare for it. No way to even react. Came right through the windshield.”

He said it only took a second for the chunk to bust a hole through the top of his windshield.

“Blew my rear-view mirror off, and all the stuff on the ceiling was all down in the seat, glass everywhere,” Lasater recalled.

And to show for it, he’s just got the pictures, along with a $2,000 repair bill that his insurance covered.

“If I had a dashcam that recorded my own reaction, I wouldn’t want to play it for ya, haha,” Lasater said laughing.

On Tuesday night, KSL-TV reported on a similar incident.

A large chunk of snow and ice hit Marcin Karpinski’s windshield as he was traveling on Interstate 15. The event was caught on dashcam video.

Caught on video: Ice falls from I-15 exit sign, shatters windshield

UDOT’s response back then: “It’s such an unfortunate incident, but, unfortunately, because it’s not something that can be predicted, it’s an act of nature, it’s not something that would be covered by UDOT,” UDOT spokesperson John Gleason said.

Gleason said the same response Friday. He added that these things are very rare and that it would be too cost prohibitive and disruptive to traffic to clear each of these signs after every storm.

But Lasater worries that it may be too costly to do nothing at all.

“Who knows, it could be a much larger piece of ice that falls on somebody’s car next,” he said. “It’s going to cost them a lot more when it kills somebody.”

These two incidents actually happened within a day of each other in December of 2021.

Both drivers got away with no injuries, and both have filed claims with UDOT, but the word right now is that they simply don’t cover these types of rare, chance incidents.