Why do people keep crashing their cars into buildings?

If they don’t like the way people drive, they should get off the sidewalk.

Punched it up a bit for you.

Well in my ex wifes case she just wanted to run over me and I happened to be inside of a building so the poor building paid the price.

Yep. Thread over.

There’s a street locally that has a curve much sharper than it looks. The residents along the curve resorted to “decorative” boulders to protect their houses.

Around here people seem to drive off the road into trees or off cliffs or into the Bay more frequently than into stores. Though one clown drove into the Macy’s Men’s Department.
I don’t know if he ordered a suit or not. They did put up concrete poles after that.

I think mixing brake/accelerator is the big one. In store/restaurant surveillance videos, you often see drivers pulling into a parking spot in a controlled manner, and then suddenly accelerating to punch through the front wall of the establishment. Once you mix up the pedal, the car starts accelerating instead of decelerating, you panic and push the pedal you think is the brake even harder, and then you end up on the evening news.

Mixing forward and reverse may be a precursor, but without that pedal confusion, you’d just end up idling into the wall instead of powering through.

I’m a little surprised most strip mall places don’t have steel/concrete bollards to protect against that hazard.

Didn’t Sheldon somehow wind up on the third floor of the Galleria?

Study Estimates That Pokemon GO Has Caused More Than 100,000 Traffic Accidents

Note that accidents tend to cluster around areas known as “Pokestops”.

I once saw a guy turn right onto a main road and just keep turning right until he had U-turned into an apartment building. He would have gone through a set of glass sliding doors, but one of his wheels broke through the lid of a utility vault, stopping him. He backed up and drove away, making it sort of a hit and run.

We got the license number and called it in. The cop who took the report asked for a description of the driver, but it was dark and we were concentrating on getting the license. He said pity, the guy will probably abandon the car and claim it was stolen. Note for next time, I guess.

Fascinating.

The conclusion that Pokémon GO caused more total dollars of physical destruction and medical expenses than it earned in total revenue is interesting.

Talk about privatizing profits and socializing costs!!

There’s a curve like that a couple of miles down the road from here. The people living there started by planting shrubs, then built up a little rise, now it looks like they installed a levee.

It seems a lot of times when it is an elderly driver involved, it’s because of this.

Up north one convenience people frequently install is a remote car starter - start your car from inside, then let it warm up before you go out. However, professional installers will (are supposed) to put a connection to prevent a manual transmission car from starting in gear. Sometimes this is not the case. I know of two cases where the vehicle attempted to come when called like a happy puppy.

Reminds me of that famous photo where the train had crashed through the second story windows of a train station.

Well, if the buildings would stay out of the street that wouldn’t happen…ta-dum… thank you… I’ll be here all week.

Seriously, I have often wondered the same thing. Especially when someone pulls up to park at a convenience store or fast food place and then goes plowing through the building. The part I find hard to understand is the old excuse “I thought it was the brake”. How could you think it was the brake when your barrelling through a building?
I, too, have a mother-in-law who drove through her garage, through the utility room, out through the back wall, into the back yard, pushing a washing machine, dryer and freezer with her. When asked how that happened she said… “I thought it was the brake”

I have been sort of hesitant to be too critical because there might come a time when it happens to me and then I will know exactly how that occurs.

“Though” is the past tense.
They became aware of their error.

This^.

From the moment the driver presses the wrong pedal until the accident is over is 3-4 seconds tops. For most people, and especially elderly people, that’s not enough time to process the whole thought chain:[ol][li]Perceive: Something’s wrong, the car is accelerating.[/li][li]Decide: I believe my foot’s on the brake, so the correction is to step harder.[/li][li]Act: step harder on the pedal.[/li][li]Perceive: It’s getting worse! Oh crap!![/li][li]Think: What’s wrong with the car?[/li][li]Think: What is wrong with my mental model of this situation?[/li][li]Think: Oh, maybe my foot is on the throttle.[/li][li]Perceive: Look at foot. Yes, that’s it!. Oops![/li][li]Decide: I need to move foot & stomp the actual brake.[/li][li]Act: move foot and stomp brake.[/li][li]Car reacts and slows to a stop.[/ol]All that stuff takes time. People who haven’t been trained on dynamic error management will probably stall at step 4 even given lots of time. Understanding and accepting that if strange stuff is happening, then the odds are that the problem is you and not your machine is a very, *very *unnatural act. Jumping to step 6 only happens if you’re trained to do that.[/li]
Almost all airplane accidents happen when the pilot(s)’ mental model(s) deviate enough from actual reality that their inputs are wrong, too late, or absent. Compared to a parking lot, stuff goes wrong in jets down right leisurely. In a parking lot, the time from mistake to crunch is way too short to realize the screw-up and apply take 2.
The only good corrective, and it’s not that effective, is to think abut and rehearse that if your car ever does something unexpected, instantly let go. Hands off wheel, both feet on the floor. You won’t he improving whatever’s gonna happen next, but at least you won’t be making it worse. But you’re also not going to ad lib this reaction. You’ve got to decide today and rehearse it often. Then, maybe, it’ll kick in when needed.

If not, you’ll be sitting in your car inside the Kwik-E-Mart or Bank of Springfield wondering how/why your car went stupid and attacked a building.

Drivers cash into power lines a lot in my city , We lost our power twice and it was on the 13th of the month each time . I heard on the that people mistaken the gas pedal for the brake pedal or they had a medical ER. A booze store had cars cash though it a few time in my city so the people had to been DUI at the time.

Yes, this is how I crashed through my friends’ garage door. Luckily it was a old garage they just used for storage. God I felt like an idiot. It was my third car – first one was the training one which got many injuries, but the second one none! Then the third one I smushed into the garage door when the car was only months old. :mad:

Oh, and I did back into a building with the corner of the aforementioned training car. The building was fine.

disreguard