Is a cop stepping in front of speeding cars more dangerous than drivers that speed?

While out running today, I witnessed police employee Gonzales step in front of two lanes of cars that were moving about 50 mph.  He was working at a speed trap, and was signaling for one of the cars to stop so he could give them a ticket.

Driving faster than the speed limit may or may not be dangerous.  In a case like this, with most cars going at the same speed, dry roads, and sunny skies, I don't think it was dangerous at all for a driver to choose to go 5-15 mph faster than the speed limit.  But what is definitely dangerous is someone stepping in front of these moving cars to signal them to pull over to the shoulder.

Mr. Gonzales didn't just take a step into the road, but walked through a full lane of traffic, about 10 feet into the road.  Two vehicles had to quickly slow down to about 10 mph to avoid running him over.  This could be a danger to other drivers behind these first two cars who wouldn't be expecting anyone to slow down that much and who would not be able to see Mr. Gonzales standing in the road. I would also be a danger to the two drivers in front, who may have briefly glanced away from the road due to a some reason like adjusting their radio volume or responding to a young child in the back seat.  Looking back to the road to see Mr. Gonzales standing in front of them might cause them to use dangerous evasive maneuvers and drive into the oncoming lane of traffic or to swerve into each other.

Mr. Gonzales saw me filming him from across the street and yelled to me that he would do an interview with me after he finished with the driver he had just pulled over.  I checked with him to be sure it was okay for me to cross the road to him and hoped that he wasn't tricking me into giving me a  jaywalking ticket.

I'm getting better at my one-on-one interviews with police like this, but I still made several mistakes throughout this video.  Several times I raised my voice to talk over him instead of just allowing him to speak, then taking my turn.  I was too excited about making my point to him, and I wish I would have been a better listener.  Also, I was shaking pretty bad, but I always do in these situations, and I don't expect that to get any better with more experience.  My adrenaline always gets going, even though I didn't feel any fear while talking to him.  Can you see any other mistakes I made or any ways I could have been better?  It's important, in all the things we do, that we are always evaluating ourselves and looking for ways to improve.

At the end of the video Mr. Gonzales remembers me warning drivers of a speed trap.  As a reminder, here is the blog about that incident. Cop Blocking and Police Intimidation