Location: Woodland Way S., a residential street with a posted 30 Mph speed limit in Kent Washington.
The proud new owner of a 1994 Mazda RX-7 in his 20s came speeding down our street and failed to manage a slight curve while doing 80 Mph. Eye-witnesses described a red flash streaking by, accompanied by the sound of an accelerator being gunned.
He apparently works at a local GM dealership and lives with his mother.
This is definitely not one of those failure to launch situations. Look at this first picture where you can see how he swerved off the road, hit a ditch, launched himself "Dukes of Hazzard" style clear across that driveway and halfway up a tree. This guy got some serious hang-time
Here's the driveway the car flew across, not a scratch on it because he launched off the ditch on the left side and cleared the whole thing.According to the police he must have been flying at speeds near 50 MPH, and that is after he hit the ditch which shot him upwards while certainly taking off a major chunk of his speed.
Here's a shot from the direction the car went, see that darker rectangular section in the middle? That's where he launched, and you can see the resulting tree-hugging affair just beyond it.
Anyone want to buy some slightly used chrome wheels?
His rear tires had virtually no tread, but he sure has stylin' super-wide chrome wheels yo!
The driver then had the temerity to argue with eyewitnesses about his speed. He swears he was only going 35 (in a 3o MPH zone). His actual speed was easily in excess of 70 MPH. He lost control of his vehicle when he clipped the soft shoulder on the right and over-corrected. As a result he managed to end up on the right side of the road, while negotiating a very slight turn to the right.
The faceplate of his in-dash stereo landed somewhere in the back seat! Parts of plastic were hurled 40 feet further into the yard.Had it not been for this tree he would have landed in the house's living room. Yes, there were people at home!
The driver managed to scramble out of the car's side window with fairly minor scrapes despite that nothing is left straight anywhere near the car.
This car required two tow trucks, one with a flatbed and the other with a hoist load it onto the flatbed because it was so mangled and it kept getting hooked on the side and rear of the bed. It took them nearly 30 minutes to get it up there!
The impact scratches on that tree are 8-9 feet in the air!The driver managed to walk away from this one, but only through sheer luck. Had he hit that ditch and flipped forward with his nose down he would have hit the tree with his roof and he would have gotten crushed.
Instead he got to argue with and intimidate bystanders with his version of just how fast he thought he should have been going. Later he got more creative and shared the revelation that his accelerator had gotten stuck. We all remember the Audi story from way back; but that case eventually turned out to be driver error, and had nothing to do with Audi, but the damage was done. I'm sure Mazda's lawyers will want to have a word with this guy.
