Friday, April 16, 2010

When people drop in..

Last Saturday we had the strangest thing happen at our property...

Some guy tried to turn around at the top of our driveway, he left the car in reverse thinking it was in "drive". The car shot down our step drive and he panicked leaving his foot hard on the gas pedal thinking that he was on the brake, he then bounced off the inside bank, then over a steep drop, bulldozed his way through the bush and then rolled it into a ravine.!!
The car finally stopping on it's side against a tree some thirty metres from the road and completely secluded deep under the canopy of trees.

He remained trapped in the over-turned car, unable to open the door due to it's weight, for over an hour. At no point did he think to sound his horn and let someone know of his predicament.
My brother and I were working outside all day and we heard nothing. Eventually the driver found his cellphone and called his wife who rescued him.

The first thing we knew of the crash was when she knocked on our door to say if we saw a car down the bank (on our land) not to worry because they had called a tow-truck!.
Apparently the driver swears the accelerator stuck.. yeah right! no skids marks and wheel spin marks right down the drive and over a bank.

Three tow trucks turned up that night to extract it, along with a team of operators. It did provide a ton of entertainment for my guests who had arrived for a BBQ dinner, most of whom had driven straight past the crash site in the drive and not realised someone was trapped in a car below the road.

Had the guy been more seriously injured and not found his phone (or his horn) he could have been there for at least another 24 hours before I would have seen the damage to the surrounding trees and driveway and investigated.

The car is a total write-off. On the plus side, the driver and his wife stopped by the next day to apologise and give us a two native trees to replace the ones that were up-rooted by his out of control excursion.
























2 comments:

Glenn McMillan said...

Bizarre to say the least! And knowing your drive, he was a fair way down it before he went over. I don't think you will ever get the truth on that one. Shame about the trees but you did get some entertainment value.

gollygoshgumgoo said...

Poor buggar. He'll never live that one down! Ha ha.