7224 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

I dunno, I thought we might want to have a thread like this. If not, move me.

Anyway, this is an odd one eh? The injured person is a pedestrian.

Crash injures woman, snarls downtown traffic

By Katie DeRosa, Times Colonist
October 27, 2009 6:29 PM

http://www.timescolo...2017/story.html

Aftermath of an accident at Douglas and Broughton streets that injured a woman.


Aftermath of an accident at Douglas and Broughton streets that injured a woman.
Photograph by: Adrian Lam, Times Colonist

A crash between two vehicles at the intersection of Broughton and Douglas streets around 3 p.m. Tuesday sent a car careening through the Sussex Place courtyard, seriously injuring an older woman and snarling traffic on Douglas Street.

[...]

[Holden West]

It went through the frickin' Sussex cut-through? That's nuts. If they had never renovated the Sussex that car would have ended up in the hotel lobby.

[VicHockeyFan]

It went through the frickin' Sussex cut-through?

Even more acrobatic:

Const. Alvin Deo said an older-model Chevrolet pickup was heading south on Douglas, trying to make a left turn onto Broughton when a red Chrysler neon (sic) heading north collided with it.

The force propelled the Neon forward onto the sidewalk, where the woman was struck. The car then hurled through the narrow Douglas Street opening of the courtyard, bounced off the stairs and exited out the east side of the courtyard on Broughton Street.

[Kikadee]

Does anyone know what happened on Monday afternoon (26 October 2009) at the corner of Helmcken and Burnside? Damaged minivan in the middle of the intersection, and someone on the radio reported that another vehicle was overturned in a yard nearby, but I can't find any information in local newspapers or on the Saanich police website.....

[arfenarf]

Even more acrobatic:

???The car did a 180 as it pinballed through the Sussex?

Amazing. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this one.

[manuel]

So is this what it did, or did it go into entrance further north and exit at the corner?

[manuel]

Let's try this

[Mike K.]

It didn't go through the entire courtyard. It was stopped at the entrance on the corner of Douglas and Broughton, but what the TC article stated was the "east entrance" was really just another side of the main entrance.

[weirdie]

That's way too far East. By your example, the car would have come out nearly at the stairs to the library. It just came out on the other side of the pillar right on the corner.

[Mike K.]

The "BC Bud energy drink" van involved in a small fender bender yesterday.

[VicHockeyFan]

The "BC Bud energy drink" van involved in a small fender bender yesterday.

Bummer, dude...

[VicHockeyFan]

Oh, dear....

Car crashes through second-storey parkade window

http://www.timescolo...9763/story.html

November 5, 2009 6:02 PM


A car sits on its roof after a driver drove out of a parkade's second-floor window at Oak Bay Professional Centre, 1625 Oak Bay Avenue on Thursday morning. Nov. 5, 2009
Photograph by: Darren Stone, Victoria Times Colonist

A window washer narrowly escaped injury Thursday morning when a car plunged out of a second-storey window at a parkade.

[...]

[mat]

One wonders how the car park was designed - usually there are steel/concrete barriers to prevent vehicles from 'accidently' driving through windows.

Very glad no one was seriously hurt

[yodsaker]

So that's why traffic was re-routed along Fort from the Junction.
Nice piece of driving!

[sebberry]

I would normally take this oppertunity to poke fun of the poor driving habbits of the majority of Victorians, but I can't do that where an elderly person is involved.

[arfenarf]

I had no idea there was a parkade in there at all. Amazing.

...I struggled with the photo for a little while: I know the building and know the area well, but Oak Bay Ave slopes downhill to the East (the left side of the building when you look at its face). I had to think very hard before realizing the photo is of the Terrace Ave side.

[Holden West]

I didn't know there was parking there either. A clever disguise.

I seems to me there's been several severe-looking accidents over the past couple of weeks where the people in the car walked away with relatively minor injuries. It's testament to the increased safety of modern cars. If they were driving 50 year old cars there would be carnage.

[VicHockeyFan]

1200-BLK Hillside at Cook is closed, will be for a few hours according to CFAX, a stolen car has flipped and crashed into a home. Not sure if it was being chased.

On a related note, ever notice how car chases almost always end in crashes when the suspect vehicle tries to make a turn? "Hey, Phil, that cop is right on our tail, we better take this turn at 120kmh, that'll shake him!" I guess under the stress of the chase, you don't consider the physics of the situation, plus I suppose you are often in a stolen vehicle, of which you haven't had time to learn it's constraints. Car theives ought to consider before-hand that in 95% of the cases, the Toyota Tercel you stole, combined with your driving skills, is unlikely to outrun a police cruiser with an experienced high-speed driver at the wheel.

[Jason-L]

To be fair, if you're trying to escape a police pursuit, travelling in a straight line isn't going to be very effective either. I suppose the hope is that by making a series of rapid, sudden and unexpected turns, they throw off their pursuer. The problem being, as you point out, that most cars are not designed for such manuevers... while most police cars are.

As well, your average criminal is not very good at risk-benefit analysis really ... I suspect they live in the "Hey, if there's a 1% chance it'll work, I should try it!" school of thought.

[mat]

Many moons ago I took an advanced driver training course for emergency vehicles. Cornering at speed was a major part of the instruction - namely knowing the vehicle, picking the skid point, when to brake and accelerate, road conditions etc.

It was an eye opener as much of the assumed knowledge in being a safe driver were thrown out the window. A trained police driver will prefer a suspect car to attempt throwing off the chase by cornering, it allows for cutoff maneuvers and generally slows down a 'follow to arrest'. Accidents are therefore less likely to result in serious injury or death.

Police generally will back off a chase on straight roads when a suspect vehicle reaches speeds that will likely result in a death.

That course gave me a whole new appreciation to F1 drivers