Drinking while driving?
I was heading home having finished my last exam yesterday around 11:30am. About half way between Clonmel and Ballymacarbery on the opposite side of the road was a damaged BMW 318. As you can see from one of the photos below it was just abandoned on the road just after a blind corner! No sign of the driver. And it was a female driver too.. More on that later!
Being the good citizen that I am I turned my car around and pulled up behind it with my hazard lights on in such a way that anyone coming around the corner would see my car well in advance rather than ploughing blind after the corner into the back of the BMW.
Anyway, after that I rang the Gardai and told them about it and they said they were going to send a car and a tow truck to get it. While I was waiting I decided to have a gander and take a few photos.
Now back to it being a female driver – I made this deduction assuming it wasn’t stolen as they had locked the car when they fled. Inside on the passenger seat was an empty bottle of wine and in the passenger footwell was an unopened bottle of wine. Between the driver and passenger seats were the fragments of a broken wine glass and strewn about the place was some lipstick, eyeliner, face power and a bottle of perfume. While in the back seat was a duvet and two pink pillows!
Unfortunately the photo I took of the inside didn’t turn out great because my reflection is in the window but you get an idea. Click a photo for 1024×768 goodness.
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Wow, that’s nasty. Any idea what they crashed into?
Donncha, Thats’ the strangest thing. All along that road is a hedge which is pretty soft and wouldn’t have caused that much damage. Not only that there is no mud or grass from the soft margin along the wheels. There is no paint from another car either or scrapes on the road surface from the broken wheel!
For all intents and purposes it looked like it had fallen off the back of a truck!
The likeliest thing that they hit was a gate pier or something similar.
Now that you say it, it does look like it could have broken loose from a tow truck – I’d say one of those rear lift-beam types where the two front wheels are lifted and the car follows.
From looking at the photo, the damage caused was definitely something solid and about knee-height (a boulder, barrier, or bollard). Nothing in the proximity of the photo has those characteristics, and if it travelled any distance on that wheel the car would be on the verge with its wishbone joint in pieces on the road behind it.
I’ve been in instances whilst towing where substandard slings and straps fail under pressure. I’ve had slings sheer, rigid bars bend and straps snap or fail at the ratchet. So quite possibly, by the placement of the vehicle that some unfortunate towing operative would have gotten a good bollocking back at the yard!
The tyre prints on the edge of the verge show a four wheel rear axle – sort of backing up the above!
I’ll take my CSI cap off now.
There is only one flaw in the theory of it falling off the back of a truck Aaron – They would have noticed
In the middle picture, behind my own car you can see a crossroads. Maybe she came down either of those roads??
What a waste of a perfectly good bimmer
I wouldn’t think it would cost all that much to repair Dan. New wheel, wishbone, bumper and panel. Bout €3000 I reckon.
Actually come to think of it that is a lot but it would be no write off though.