Last November, a red Mustang went through the front window of a Starbucks off of a major highway, Route 4,in New Jersey. I was on a bus that went down the highway about 20 minutes later. My comment was “There’s someone who should switch to decaf.” Later, I found out the friend of a friend who was in the Starbucks at the time was killed.
Oh dear…my parents and brother are moving to New Orleans this summer. And yes, they know about the climate. They are insane.
New Orleans can be a wonderful place, especially if you’re into a)live music [and not just jazz], b)great food, or c) amazing architecture. I claim more than a passing interest in the last two, so I like it here. Despite the weather [although today has been fantastic - cool, breezy, almost no humidity!], the crime [which has eased up a good deal] and the backwards, regressive way the government operates [property taxes are a joke and sales tax is almost 10%].
And please tell me that your parents are decent drivers. We don’t need any more demolishion derby jockeys around here, thank you very much!
I’m sorry I can’t resist . . .
ROTFLMAO
This brings back flashbacks of the movie 1941 where they bring the howitzer into the house, aim it at the Japanese sub off the coast, and fire it through the kitchen window - only to have the bed from upstairs come crashing down one floor with both kids howling in giddy delight.
Freakin’ hilarious. Sorry man, it’s just that you don’t see this everyday.
Tripler
Thank God nobody’s hurt tho . . .
Oww, sorry for your house! At least they left the car behind…Two years ago somebody took out the whole corner of my brick garage in the alley. How they drove away, I don’t know. There were Jeep parts strewn everywhere. and pieces of it embedded in the brick. What are you doing with the car?
The car was removed by a police tow truck shortly after the pictures were taken. So, to my mysterious shrimp-eating, wall-busting friends: If you want to retrieve your brakeless car, head down to the police impound lot.
Received a not from a Japanese friend of mine today. Her only comment… “You must have soft walls.”
Never was a truer statement spoken.
-dwtno of the soft-walls
My aunt and uncle had a tractor-trailer come through the kitchen wall of their eighteenth century stone farmhouse. The driver was slightly injured (no other casualties, thank heavens) and the damage was reparable, but they were somewhat miffed to say the least.
Their house is located near where a four lane highway narrows to two lanes, and the truck driver had been going too fast. Two years earlier a car driver had also struck the house (to much less effect).
There is now a row of reasonably large fir trees along the road and the road has been straightened as part of other road development, which should mitigate against a recurrence.
That’s actually an 86-89 Generation Accord… They changed the shape of the taillights in 1990, and the corners are too defined.
I know this really has nothing to do with the OP, but its another funny accident thingy. So I just thought I’d share that I got hit by a bus, although I’ve never had the pleasure of a car in my house 
Sorry about your house, too bad they took the car!
My mother’s house sits on a right-angle turn out in the country. Heading north, if you go straight, you go up her driveway. To stay on the road, you must make a hard right turn. One time, a few years ago, late at night, someone didn’t quite make that right turn and took out two crepe myrtles on either side of a mimosa tree. IOW, they managed to go around the mimosa tree without touching it but wiped out the crepe myrtles flanking it. They also managed to miss a utility pole. They left deep ruts in the yard, but they didn’t even touch the house, fortunately.
The most recent scene I’ve witnessed of a driver that decided to take a shortcut through a building was a few years ago. A pickup went head-to-head with the front entrance of a building at a Y shaped intersection. The building in question was owned by Schott (as in Marge) Monuments, a gravestone company. Unfortuneately, the driver didn’t die, depriving the rest of us of our daily dose of irony.
If ya live in a place where there’s a good chance of this, dig a trench.
If you get advance warning (like several people ramming you fence) dig a trench.
Just get a mattock & a spade. Make it 2 1/2 ft wide by 1 ft deep by whatever lenght you need. Call it a drainage ditch or what you want, but make it steep sided. Vertical sides. Line it with brick to make sure it keeps it’s shape.
If anybody trys to plow through that, they rip out their suspension.
If the cops ask, say–“Hey! It’s just a drainage ditch.”
What a story. I’m glad noone was hurt, and I hope your house is repaired, and insured at that.
I have a story among those lines as well.
An uncle and aunt of mine own a photo shop on the edge of the town I grew up in. The main road (speed limit 80 km/h) coming from Belgium enters the village (which is where the speed limit becomes 50 km/h, but people don’t tend to notice that at night), and after 300 meters makes a rather sharp turn to the right, right in front of their shop, which is to the left of the curve - if that makes any sense.
Between 1975 and 1987, the full glass front of the store was rammed in a grand total of SEVEN times by drunk drivers. My aunt and uncle lived above the store at the time, and while in six cases my uncle merely found (almost) unhurt yet very intoxicated drivers in the middle of his store, he one time had the pleasure of finding a convertible driver. His head was severed by a large sheet of glass from the store windows. Not a pretty sight.
Insurance covered it every time, and after that last fatality, a couple of chicanes were installed in the road just before the turn. Of course, the medians of these chicanes were subsequently the regular target of speeding cars, but I guess it beats a store window, right?
Back in college, we had a Domino Pizza delivery driver come down a hill, through a fence, over a wall and into our backyard. Mind you, this was in the “30 minutes or free” days which is why he was careening down the hill.
Being college students, we naturally grabbed a couple of cold ones from the fridge, set up lawn chairs and watched the ensuing chaos as the tow truck (it ultimatly took two) tried to pull it back over the wall.
And, of course, we badgered the delivery guy until he gave us the undeliverable pizzas!
Man, I hate to tell you, but it’s not limited to your state or town. I am on the board of a neighborhood association and my ‘hood is near Syracuse University and LeMoyne College. The student tenants are dyed in the wool members of the culture you describe. Trash on the streets, noise all night on the weekends, BBQ’s shooting flames into wood frame porches. If you explain these things to them, it’s a 50-50 proposition that you won’t get told to F**K OFF. And it’s not just ssstudents, some of the townies are even worse. House falls down around them and they drive a hot sports coupe. Uh, what??? We had a carload of kids sksin past a big maple and through an 8’ high hedge into a smaller tree inside the yard down the street from me a couple years ago. Didn’t make the news either, and we’re still finding pieces of their mitsubishi. Enjoy the new bay window, I guess!!! 
My mom, who lives on a corner lot, had a problem with people driving over the corner of her property. Her solution to the problem might be of use to you, dwtno:
Boulders. Big granitic ones. Order 'em from a landscaping company and have large burly men arrange them in an attractive way across the front of your yard. My mom planted pampas grass behind them. They actually look pretty nice, and you’d best believe people don’t drive across that corner any more.
Your rose bush did its valiant best, but for real automobile stopping power, you need boulders.
Hey, I almosst forgot: when my wife was a clerk in a liquor store (GREAT place to meet losers…no, I don’t drink) there was an incident where some poor fool had a heart attack in his caddy, slumped onto the horn and the gas, and drove into the front of the store. :eek:
They thought the only thing that kept the whole car from entering was the substantial bike rack outside. Big steel rack, seriously substantial. Quite a few flying bottles, and goodbye display window, but the only casualty was the driver, and he wasn’t even there to see the fun part, poor bastard. 
Hey, I almosst forgot: when my wife was a clerk in a liquor store (GREAT place to meet losers…no, I don’t drink) there was an incident where some poor fool had a heart attack in his caddy, slumped onto the horn and the gas, and drove into the front of the store. :eek:
They thought the only thing that kept the whole car from entering was the substantial bike rack outside. Big steel rack, seriously substantial. Quite a few flying bottles, and goodbye display window, but the only casualty was the driver, and he wasn’t even there to see the fun part, poor bastard.
I have to say, this thing is more common then not. Last October or so, I drove past the scene where a car had missed a turn, and slammed through a small brick wall into a brick garage. This person somehow managed to take out about a quarter of the garage without making the whole thing come crashing down.
And just yesterday I saw an SUV smashed into the corner of a little brick house on the side of one of the busier roads on this side of town. How they managed this is beyond me, as the house was on the right side (as in the direction the SUV was pointed) of the road and there are no intersections anywhere near.
I feel bad about this. I hope you get everything fixed without event.
This type of occurrence has convinced me to never buy a house on the edge of any busy road…ever.
This may be a bit off-topic, but it does continue the vehicle in building theme.
When I was in college, a truck driver went to a nearby movie theater. Something happened that got him mad(I don’t remember if they were sold out for the movie he wanted to see or if they caught him switching movies or what). He left the theater and proceeded to drive his 18-wheeler through the front of the building into the lobby.
dwtno, hope everything gets fixed without too much problem.