The woman was 34 years old and had 2 kids in the car, and I’m personally thinking she had some kind of medical episode, most likely a seizure. I hope so, anyway.
I coach and referee youth soccer. We literally have dozens of kids and hundreds of parents/family at our fields (nowhere close to Kansas) on Saturdays and over half of them could have a car driven on them with no problem (I refereed today at a couple of them). I hope it wasn’t deliberate, but even by accident this could happen almost anywhere.
It reminds me a bit of Diane Schuler and the 2009 Mount Pleasant crash:
There, it was booze and weed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were something similar here.
We’ll find out eventually. I’m sure plenty of parents recorded it.
The driver has been released, pending upcoming results.
She was taken into police custody Saturday, but has since been released pending the results of toxicology testing and a mechanical examination of the vehicle, Wichita police said. No charges have been filed against her.
Apologies if this link is paywalled.
Here’s another
I’ve had several cases over the years at least plausibly attributable to medical emergencies. You’d be horrified, but not surprised, to learn that the insurance companies claim no laibilty payments because “no negligence.” It’s often necessary to establish that they knew of the condition and drove anyway, which is negligent. Of course, I’ve had many many more cases that did involve drugs and/or alcohol.
The phrase “sudden acceleration” has entered the chat. Maybe.
How does this work in a no-fault insurance state. My insurance (even if I’m a pedestrian) would cover me even before it was determined if the driver knew of his/her condition.
I have (had?) epilepsy. Very occasional grand mal seizures, probably related to taking Wellbutrin. My last one was in 2016. Since I have no warning when they come on, I get paranoid sometimes it’s going to happen while I’m on the road. I went off that medication and I’m on an anticonvulsant now, so the odds are probably pretty low that I will ever have a seizure again.
Still, the law in my state is that after a seizure you’re not allowed to drive for six months. I had to take an uber to work for 6 months. Which makes me wonder why that exact time frame and how you can be reasonably sure you won’t have one at some point in the future. I mean, I had my first one in 2008 (which was incorrectly diagnosed as syncope), my next two on the same day in 2016. So I’m kind of scared that I’m due for another.
Anyway, epilepsy is a thing, people with epilepsy are allowed to drive, and that weirds me out. I wonder what the liability is when you know you have epilepsy but you’re following the law.
Just a few months ago, a relative of mine, from what they pieced together, had a seizure while driving, ending up smashing her car into a house going about 50, broke both her legs and three vertebrae, burns from the airbag bad enough to require skin grafts AND had a stroke.
Somehow she was lucky enough that she didn’t hit anyone else in the process.
She’d never had a seizure before.
I was going to suggest that they have to draw a line somewhere, otherwise anyone that’s ever had a seizure would never be allowed to drive again. On a whim, I went to the wiki page for “seizure” and found this:
In adults, after 6 months of being seizure-free after a first seizure, the risk of a subsequent seizure in the next year is less than 20% regardless of treatment.[77]
I used to live in Princeton, NJ, near rte 1. And there were several intersections with rte 1 where the only thing stopping the cross traffic was a traffic light, after a long straight stretch of road.
About once a year there’d be a news report of someone driving through the light into rte 1, often killing someone else who hit them. In every one of those cases, the driver who ran the light had suffered a heart attack or stroke before the impact.
It kinda freaked me out. And i rather think those were badly designed intersections. But also, driving dangerously after a disabling event is a thing.
I’ve not shared this story before that I can recall.
My mother was stopped at a curb idling while waiting for somebody to come out and join her. A city bus was standing at the same curb a few car lengths ahead.
She had a heart attack, passed out, and her car powered forward and hit the back of the stopped bus squarely going 15 - 20 mph (cop’s estimate). Crunched her bumper & hood some, but the car was still drivable.
That was her third and final heart attack. She was dead right there. Of course paramedics got called, she was taken to the hospital, they did everything per their protocols. But it was a lost cause from the git go.
Handy it had not happened to her on the freeway or a busy boulevard going to or from home. Even handier for everyone who would have been around her there.
One of the odd things about this case is that from the pics–assuming they weren’t manufactured–it appears that there was a sun visor blocking the windshield. If that holds up, this will indeed be an odd story.
Not disputing you, but do you have a cite to a pic?
All I’ve seen are pics of police cars and cops standing around. With some personal effects scattered on the ground where apparently a crowd (most of them anyway) scattered to get out of the way.
This is one that has been floating around.. Looks to be a still from a video, but I can’t personally attest to its authenticity.
Gotta be millions of diabetics driving. Various levels of compliance.
Most diabetics can feel their blood glucose rising or lowering. But crap happens, sometimes you miss the symptoms.
I’m so brittle, I don’t drive anymore. (Plus… I am missing one eye and have a seizure disorder). I am legal to drive. Just renewed my license.
Thank you. That is very weird. If the photo is taken from a vid that was while the car was still in motion. And if it is unadulterated.
If she was still being held by the police I could more easily believe she was some sort of wacko (or severely impaired person) who “blindfolded” her car and then drove into the crowd for whatever wacko motivation.
The fact she’s been released and the cops are tightlipped about the rest of the story suggests the sunshade was installed after the fact by somebody, perhaps to keep her accompanying kids cooler.
Or the still was from before the incident started.
I know I sure don’t know. I hope somebody in Wichita gets to the bottom of it and tells the world.
I’m sorry, but I know very little about no-fault situations. I would guess that it would be covered.
The latest local story that I can find contains nothing new, except that the DA’s office will review the case.
I don’t know 100% but I do live in such a state and I was on the jury once for a no-fault lawsuit (many many years ago.) If you are a pedestrian in my state I believe the case would be automatically assigned to a random insurance company regardless of the reason. I think that’s what happened in the case I witnessed. The guy had a drug problem, he was hit by a car and sustained a TBI. He had no insurance. The driver was uninsured. The only place he could get treatment for his TBI was a specialized facility in another state that focused on joint TBI/substance abuse.
The insurance company that got his claim fought it in court on the grounds that his drug problem was his own fault.
They lost.