Now I'm Afraid To Drive Under Large Interstate Highway Signs

A still from a dashcam video showing a large freeway sign
suddenly falling on a car in Melbourne, Australia. 

Those big green signs on Interstate Highways are a dime a dozen, pointing us to which exit gets us to which town, or whatever.

These signs are all over highways all over the world, including Australia. This week, on a pleasant summer day in Melbourne, Australia (it's summer down there, for those who don't know), a giant highway sign crashed down on a car taking a freeway exit.

The dashcam footage below shows the sign crushing the car. The worst damage to the car was on the right side. In Australia, like England, the driver's side is to the right.  Still, miraculously, the driver, a 53-year-old woman, was hospitalized with minor neck injuries overnight and is expected to make a full recovery.

No word yet on why the sign came down on a calm, windless day with no storms around, but now the prospect of one of these coming down is going to be just one more reason to be worried while driving down the Interstate.

Here's the video:

Wild Road Crash, Explosion: Miraculously, No Serious Injuries

Check out this video of a terrible crash between two trucks on a Chinese highway.

The explosion was so intense that windows broke in nearby buildings.

The incredible thing is nobody got killed.

Watch:

Car Split In Half In Crash, Driver Somehow Survives

This car was split in half lengthwise in a recent California
crash, but the woman driving it somehow only had minor injuries

The video at the bottom of this post is probably the scariest auto wreck I've seen.

The scene is the aftermath of a crash on Highway 101 in California in which an SUV driven by Kevin Fenty, 27, drifted across the highway into the opposite lane.  

In that opposite lane was Apol Lansang, 26, who was driving a Chevrolet Impala and was hit by Fenty's vehicle.

The crash tore Lansang's car in half lengthwise down the middle. Amazingly, she suffered just minor injuries and was treated and released at a nearby hospital, says the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Fenty had more serious injuries but is expected to recover.

"The scene was, it was pretty intense.....It was definitely one of the most severely damaged cars I've ever seen," said CHP Sgt. Jason Bahlman.

In a follow-up interview with the Press Democrat, Lansang said when the crash was about to happen, she closed her eyes and hoped for the best.

When the crash subsided, she saw what appeared to be another car involved in the crash resting against an embankment. She later realized it was the passenger side half of her car.

Police said Lansang might not have survived had she not been wearing a seatbelt. Fenty had more serious injuries because he was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from his vehicle. He's been charged with DUI.

Here's the video:












“The scene was, it was pretty intense,” said Sgt. Jason Bahlman, who has been with the CHP for 16 years. “It was definitely one of the most severely damaged cars I’ve ever seen.”

Oops. Looks Like This Ferry Operator Didn't See That Wall There

The smushed up bow of a large ferry that crashed into a
wall in the Canary Islands in the past week.

Here's one way to come ashore. Or one way to have a bad day. To make it worse, it was all caught on video.

According to local media in the Canary Islands, the ferry with 140 people on board slammed into a wall recently in those Canary Island.

Luckily only minor injuries have been reported.

The captain of the ferry lost control of the ship very soon after leaving port, on his way to Tenerife because the ferry's electrical system broke down big time. You can see the video at the bottom of this post.

It looks like the pier suffered quite a bit of damage. The ferry isn't too bad off, but the bow is battered.

Here's the video. It looks like he's intentionall ramming the wall, but he's not. The ferry was just out of control.

Truck Drags Car Four Miles Along California Freeway. Truck Driver Shrugs.

An oblivious or cruel truck driver dragged a Nissan
he had collided with up to four miles along
a California freeway. 

I guess anything can be denied nowadays.

A big rig truck driver who dragged a car he had collided with up to four miles along a California freeway says he didn't know the car was stuck to his truck.

Riiigght.

The viral video of all this is at the bottom of the post.

The first part of the incident I can accept. Accidents happen. The truck and/or the Nissan changed lanes, and there was a collision.

The Nissan got hung up on the truck and was dragged along Interstate 15 in Cajon Pass. Other drivers honked their horns and tried to get the attention of the truck driver. The person behind the wheel of the Nissan waved his arms out the window yelling for help.

I get it the truck is much bigger than the Nissan, but the truck driver couldn't figure out his rig seemed to be handling a little weirdly?

Eventually, a vehicle pulled out in front of the tractor trailer and forced it to stop. Luckily, the driver of the tractor trailer didn't try to run that person over, too.

When the truck driver was told there was a car stuck to him he said, "I didn't know it." Again. Riiight.

Not sure why the truck driver didn't stop, though, until forced to.

So far, no criminal charges have been filed, which is also odd. Truck driver must know the local cops or something.  KTLA said California Highway Patrol told them the 62-year-old truck driver showed no signs of impairment and there were no mechanical issues with the truck.

He was allowed to leave after the incident was investigated. The driver of the Nissan wasn't seriously hurt.

Here's the video:

Latest Outrage: Tennessee Bills Teen Nearly $2,970 For Wrecking Guardrail That Killed Her

Hannah Elmers, 17, died in a Tennessee car crash involving
an unsafe guardrail. The state of Tennessee later billed
her for the wrecked guardrail, but withdrew the
bill after public outcry.

Last November, Hannah Elmers, 17, was driving her dad's 2000 Volvo down Interstate 75 near Niota, Tennesees when she somehow lost control of the vehicle, traveled into the median skidded sideways, forcing the driver's side door to hit the end of a guardrail.

As USA Today reported, instead of deflecting the car, the guardrail pierced it, killing Elmers.

This would have ended up as another terrible local tragedy, a nice young teenager dying too young.

Except Tennessee decided to make things worse. Much worse, as Hannah's dad, Steven Elmers soon learned.

As USA Today describes it:

"Four months later, Steven Elmers of Lenoir City received a $2,970 bill from the Tennessee Department of Transportation, dated February 24 and addressed to Hannah for the cost of labor and materials to install 25 feet of guardrail at the scene of the crash. 

'I'm shocked, the audacity,' he said. 'What bothers me is that they're playing Russian roulette with people's lives. They know these devices do not perform at high speeds and in situations like my daughter's accident, but they leave them in place.'"

Wait, what?!?

It turns out, not only did Tennessee have the audacity to bill Hannah, they also know the type of guardrail they used is unsafe. And could kill other people.

Last fall, Tennessee transportation officials did decide to stop buying the type of guardrail involved in Hannah's crash, called a Lindsay X-Lite.

When a car hits the end of this type of guardrail, it's supposed to collapse like a telescope, theoretically minimizing injuries to the people in the car that hits it.

However, at high speeds, it doesn't collapse, and you get situations like Hannah's, where she crashed into it at high speeds. The stretch of Interstate where she was driving has a speed limit of 70 mph.

The state was originally going to leave existing dangerous guardrails in place, but now says they are  going to remove the remaining Lindsay X-Lite guardrails from other high speed locations in Tennessee.

They'd better. The Knoxville News-Sentinel says that since June, 2016, four people have died in Tennessee after colliding with this type of guardrail.

But what about that $2,980 bill?

A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation says the bill came from "a mistake somewhere in processing" and the department "greatly apologies for it."

Nice, but I don't trust it. How could somebody not catch this before it went out? I think the reversal and apology is more because of the bad PR that came when after the bill went out than any good intentions from the state.

By the way, the maybe unsafe other types of guardrails, made by Trinity Industries Inc. might be along highways in other states, like yours.

A whistleblower named Joshua Harman won a $663 million settlement against Trinity, after he alleged the company altered the design of one of its guardrails without getting approval from the Federal Highway Administration, the Knoxville News-Sentinel said. 

Virginia, citing the safety reasons, is removing a Trinity guardrail called ET-Plus for safety reasons. The city of Nashville, Tennessee did the same.

Adds the Knoxville News-Sentinel: 

"Trinity has since been involved in a slew of lawsuits nationwide in which crash victims alleged the unauthorized changes caused the guardrails to spear vehicles, resulting in injuries and deaths."

Hoo, boy, this company is in trouble. Let's hope any problematic guardrails made by this company get replaced before there are more tragedies.

Scary: Escalator Reverses, Speeds Up, Tries To Kill Shoppers

In an image taken from a video, a Hong Kong escalator
suddenly reverses direction and speeds up, sending
people crashing into a pile at the bottom. 

I'll take the stairs, thank you.

I'm always told to take the stairs when I want to get from one floor to another. It gives you a bit of exercise. It's healthier. Maybe you'll live longer.

An escalator in Hong Kong proved that point dramatically.

Dozens of shoppers were on a shopping mall escalator when this happened, according to Consumerist.

"In Hong Kong over the weekend, a 150-foot fall escalator abruptly reversed direction and flung screaming shoppers to the ground, injuring 18 of them.

Of course there's video, from multiple angles, because this was a terrifying event, that happened in a public place in 2017. One mall-goer happened to be taking video of the escalator before the mayhem started."

That video is at the bottom of this post.

The escalator normally moves people from the fourth to the eight floor of the mall at Langham Place in Hong Kong, Consumerist reports. When it reversed, it also picked up speed, going at least twice the speed it normally does.

The South China Morning Post reported that safety inspectors think the problem sarted with a malfunction of one of the escalator's two brakes and its non reversing mechanism.

Well, yeah, gee, that makes sense.

The escalator supposedly passed an inspection on March 23, and inspections are carried out twice a year, with routine checks once every two weeks or so.

Still, something obviously went wrong, judging from the scary video, below. Two mechanics have been arrested and charged with tampering with the escalator to make it reverse direction and speed up.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take the stairs.

Lucky Or Unlucky Motorists Feel Like They Were Hit By A Ton Of Bricks Because They Were

Watch the video below to see what happened when this
truckload of bricks tipped over on top of a car.

On March 14, in Chengdu Province, China, a truck loaded with a gigantic pile of bricks couldn't stop in time at a traffic light.

The truck swerved over the curb and initially avoided the cars stopped at the light. However, the truck tipped over.

Three of the motorists dodged the resulting avalanche of bricks but one did not. As you can see in the very scary video below, a car was totally buried beneath the bricks.

The good and miraculous news is that the two people in the car buried by the bricks were quickly pulled out and did not appear to suffer serious injuries.

But nevertheless, I'm sure they felt like they were hit by a ton of bricks.

Watch:

Drunk Tractor Trailer Driver Tries To Change Pants While Traveling Vermont Highway

Police said this guy crashed his tractor trailer rig on
a Vermont Interstate highway while changing his pants,
drunk and driving at 63 mph.  

In one of the stupidest traffic crashes I've ever heard of, and one thankfully in which nobody was seriously injured, a tractor trailer truck rolled over and crashed on Interstate 89 in Williston, Vermont this week.

The tractor trailer driver, Allen R. Johnson Sr. was drunk, Vermont State Police said, as he traveled along Interstate 89 at aboug 63 mph. While doing so, he was changing his pants. (!!!)

Of course, when you're changing your pants while driving a tractor trailer drunk, bad things will happen, and he tipped over onto the side of the highway. Luckily he hit nobody else, and Johnson suffered just minor injuries.

It is unclear why Johnson picked that moment to change his pants. There is a rest area very close to the crash site where motorists often stop to take breaks. The rest area has a large parking lot where tractor trailer drivers often park to eat, sleep, or, yes, change clothes.

Not sure why he didn't just go to the rest area to change his pants. And we don't know why it was important for him to change his trousers at that very moment. Not that I'm anxious to find out.

In any event, Johnson was charged with driving a commercial vehicle under the influence and negligent operation.

Sadly, the section of Interstate 89 in Vermont is very close to the site of a wrong way driver crash that killed five teenagers last month. 

Dumb BMW Driver Gets Instant Karma

Impatience is not a virtue, learns BMW guy  

Be patient on the roads, my friends.

Case in point is the video at the bottom of this post. It's a dash cam view in a car that begins with the driver of the dash cam view stopping to let a school bus in from a side street.

The school bus is a bit to leisurely and the guy who let him through is a bit too kind to the school bus driver, decides the guy in the BMW behind dash cam guy.

So the BMW honks, tries to pass to the right of the dash cam guy, to make the light, which has turned yellow.  Such impatience doesn't always have its rewards, as the dash cam video below shows

Instant karma!   (h/t BoingBoing)

Man Billed $143 For Rescuing Three Children, Man Trapped In Rollover Crash

This guy rescued a man and three
kids from an overturned van. He got
billed $143 because of it.  

You gotta like good Samaritans like Derrick Deanda.

As he was driving around in Elk Grove, California, not long ago, a van rolled over.

Inside were a man and three children. They were trapped.  

So Deanda busted out a window of the overturned van and got everybody out. They're all OK.

The local paramedics showed up and made sure everybody was doing OK. They checked Deanda's pulse, noted a small cut he received while he was rescuing the family, and they gave him a bottle of water.

Deanda now has to pay for his heroics because of a $143 bill he received from the Cosumnes  Community Services District, which is the local first responder outfit, says CBS Sacramento. 

All patients the first responders see are billed the $143. Deanda became a patient because the first responders looked at that small cut he had.  

It isn't exactly like the first responders spent hours trying to save Deanda's life. He was in pretty good shape to begin with.

"We're obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing, the same everything for every patient we encounter," Deputy Chief Mike McLaughllin said.

Deanda could appeal the bill, but why should he go through the trouble? He rescued the damn family from the overturned van.

Actually, McLaughlin would like to get rid of the bill Deanda got, but he can't because he's supposed to bill everybody. "This is a truly unique situation.... In my 28 years, this is the first time I've run into a situation similar to this."

"Our desire is to make this right," McLaughlin said. But Deanda is still going to have to appeal to make that happen.

This kind of situation does seem to discourage other would-be good Samaritans, which the world desperately needs.

"I mean, why would I want to stop to help somebody if I'm going to get a bill for $150," Deanda told CBS Sacramento. 

Always Bad When Pace Vehicle Stalls At A Bicycle Race

Here's what happened this weekend when a pace motorcycle stalled at a big bicycle race, the Red Hook Criterium in Brooklyn, New York.

Lots of unhappy racers, I'm sure:


Here's another view

Watch This Car Fall From The Fourth Level Of A Parking Garage

Baltimore County, Maryland Police and Fire have just released surveillance footage of a car plunging off the fourth level of a Towson, Maryland parking garage on March 17.

The driver of the car said the vehicle lurched forward when she was trying to park there. Miraculously, she suffered only relatively minor injuries.

Bus Crashes Into Bridge, So First Priority Is PR Damage Control

Somebody covers up the logo on a bus that crashed
in Australia in a futile attempt to avoid bad
publicity The coverup just made the PR disaster worse. 

Driver error is the cause of a recent Australian bus crash that injured several passengers, at least three of them pretty seriously.

However, the bus company's reputation might be grieviously injured due to a variation of the "Streisand Effect" that took place in the immediate aftermath in the crash.

The Streisand Effect refers to efforts to suppress some information that backfires. Sometimes, if you try to suppress information you want to keep hidden, that information then becomes more widely distributed

The name comes from singer Barbra Streisand's 2003 effort to suppress an online photographic record of homes along the California coastline, which included hers. 

She sued to erase that online record, and the publicity resulting from that lawsuit made lots of people look up her house online. If she hadn't filed the suit, probably nobody would have given a damn about her stupid coastal California house.

In the case of the Australian bus crash, as rescuers arrived on the scene to rescue 15 injured passengers trapped under bus seats in the aftermath of the crash and local media arrived to record the event, somebody from the bus company, which is called Gold Bus Ballaret, arrived.

(Note, you can see security camera footage of the bus crash at the bottom of this post.)

That bus company representative from Gold Bus Ballaret was there not to help with the injured passengers or otherwise offer assistance, but to cover up the name of the bus company logo on the wrecked bus, so as not to provide fodder for bad publicity.

According to the Herald Sun of Melbourne: 

"'That's standard protocol whenever there is a vehicle involved in a accident,' said Gold Bus Ballarat director Matthew Baird. 'Notwithstanding the severity of the situation we're out to protect our brand and tom make sure that we don't tarnish our brand with a vehicle that is obviously in quite bad disrepair. It doesn't mean any disrespect.'

Yeah, well the spectacle of some guy trying to cover up the logo on a bus wrecked by what appears to be an incompetent or inattentive driver tarnishes your brand doesn't it?

Investigators did say driver error was to blame, and other motorists apparently tried to stop the bus, knowing it would never fit beneath the overpass, but it continued anyway.

Nobody beyond the local area in Australia probably would have ever known this bus wreck ever happened, but now the world does.

Streisand Effect, Mr. Baird. Look it up

Yikes! Watch Dog Escape Death By Inches

A car is about to smash into this Brazilian bakery.
A dog escapes by INCHES! 

A car recently slammed into a Brazilian bakery.

Surveillance cameras show a dog at the doorway narrowly escaping death, probably because it smelled something good inside.

The video below shows two angles. Watch at about 42 seconds in to see how close that dog came to going to doggie heaven.

Reports are the dog and the people inside the bakery are fine. No word on the fate of the people in the car

Here's the video, via LiveLeak:

Truck Driver Doesn't Like The Road Sign, Apparently

Truck bed up, and a road sign don't mix
in Saudi Arabia.  

Some guy named Mohaed Qutteneh was driving down the highway in Saudi Arabia spotted the truck in front of him with its truck bed raised up.

Not quite sure why, but things did not work out well for the truck driver or the road sign he encountered.

I also don't know why the person in the white pickup truck seemed to accelerate toward what would obviously become a soon-to-be mess.

See for yourself:

Bored Man Drives Through His House For Fun

The scene after a guy drove his truck through his
house, because it seemed like the thing to do at the time.  

A man in Georgia had an angry phone call with with his wife.

He was also unemployed and bored.

So he did what anybody would do in that situation and drove his truck through his house.

OK, maybe most people wouldn't do that. But you're not John Paul Jones Jr of Senoia, Georgia.

"I don't know. It was just one of those spur of the moment crazy things," Jones shrugged, according to WGCL CBS 46 in Atlanta. 

He's a contractor, so he's making his own repairs to his house. Which means he's technically working, but who is paying him?

The good news is his truck still works despite having been driven through the house

Police came to the scene, but Jones is facing no charges. It's perfectly legal to drive your own truck through your own house, apparently.

I wonder how impressed his (soon to be former?) wife is with this guy.

Scary Video: Truck Crashes Through Office Wall Onto Woman: (Happy Spoiler: She Survives)

Office walls begin to implode behind a woman
working in a Brazilian office as a out of control
pickup truck slams through the building.  

A pickup truck crashed through the wall of a real estate office in Brazil this week. The truck had collided with another vehicle on the street outside, then bounced off the other vehicle and crashed through the office.

The woman sitting near the front door had little or no time to react as the truck crashed through the wall behind her.

Judging from the video, it looks like she was killed, but it turns out she was propelled in front of the flying debris and suffered minor injuries.

The truck's driver and other occupants in the office, in the city of Toledo, Brazil, suffered slight injuries as well.

Authorities say the woman will recover. Except for I imagine what will be a fear of random vehicles coming through the walls of any room she is.

Here's the frightening video, taken from the office security cameras:

World's Worst Attempt To Get Out Of A Parking Lot

"Calgary's Worst Driver" backs into a red car
during an epic struggle to get out of what should
be an easy parking lot.  

OK, I get it. Some people don't have a good spatial sense, so getting out of tight spots with their cars can be a challenge.

But really? REALLY??

Watch the video, below, of some moron trying to get out of a snowy parking lot in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Yeah, it's snowy, there's other cars around, but you can't manage this. And you get a driver's license, HOW?!?

Police are investigating this, says the Calgary Sun, because the driver backed into a red car. Plus, the driver is clearly stupid.

Authorities later caught up with the woman driving the SUV and gave her a $115 ticket for unsafe backing. I think they should just take her license away ---- forever.

Wicked Scary When A Firetrucks Hits A Helicopter With Blades Turning

Spars fly as a helicopter on the ground spins wildly
out of control at a crash scene in Chile.  

Talk about a situation going from bad to worse.  
In Santiago, Chile recently, a drunk driver crashed into a police car.

According to Jalopnik and 9News.au, police closed off a street to let a helicopter land and help the three police officers who were seriously injured by the drunk driver.

A firetruck was also responding to the crash when it got a bit too close to the chopper, nicking one of its spinning blades.

That made things turn really dramatic, to say the least.

The collision sent the helicopter spinning violently, eventually flinging off its rotors, hitting a police car, and then exploding.

The helicopter pilot somehow survived, but with multiple fractures. The injured officers weren't further hurt, and were taken to a hospital for treatment.

As Jalopnik noted:

"This is certainly a strong reminder of how terribly things can go wrong for emergency responders. That, and it is a massive testament to the safety structurs built into modern helicopters. I shudder to imagine the G-forces that pilot endured."

I'll say!

Here's the video: