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Follow-up on the falling car

Just a quick post with a few more details on the car that drove through our fence and took a 15 ft. dive into the ravine below:

  • It belonged to the friend of our neighbors (who are college-age kids; their parents seem to have moved elsewhere).  He had parked it on our shared driveway, and apparently not engaged the parking brake fully enough.
  • First question from his dad: “Did you turn the tires”? First question from his mom: “Did you turn the tires”? Apparently, he wasn’t too versed in parking on a hill – and here in our area, you really have to be.
  • Talking to his dad, who came to repair the damage to the fence, we concluded the car really must have gotten enough speed to just go straight over the edge without a big change in its orientation.
  • The trees, which were still standing, hadn’t been touched or repaired.  They were simply flexible enough that instead of snapping, they got bent backwards and then rebounded back almost to their original placement. Pretty resilient.
  • They had to bring a crane, usually used if trucks or tankers roll off the road, to hoist the car out of the ravine. It was essentially a straight lift and pivot to get it back onto solid ground.
  • The car was in driving condition! Apparently, the owner of the car is still using it to go to/from work every day.
The best part was an exchange between the dad and son when we were discussing the above part about the speed of the car.  The son said “it’s lucky nobody was in the car, or maybe it would have tipped over instead of landing flat”. To which his dad dryly responded: “if there was someone in the car, they would have pressed the brakes!”.

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