Eyes on the Street: Speeding SUV Aftermath

A camera phone tipster sends this shot of wreckage on a residential street in Boerum Hill. This morning, a speeding SUV managed to build up enough force to plow through parked cars, take out the iron gate, and demolish a good chunk of the ground floor. FDNY, fearing a cave-in, has propped up the front of the building. Mercifully, no one was hurt. We’re told that the driver lost control due to a seizure, though our source says that traffic engineering has also made this block more susceptible to crashes.

…since DOT replaced the stop sign at the intersection before our block [with a traffic light], we have had three incidents where cars have gotten up to such a speed they’ve flipped over and took out a bunch of cars.

When this same traffic light was installed two years ago, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, who now heads up the public plaza program at DOT, found it inexplicable.

Update: Curbed has more photos and details about how this happened. The driver kept trying to maneuver the berserk vehicle until the wheels were in the air:

…a lady tried to parallel park on front of the house, and her accelerator got stuck. After punching the hole, she sped back onto the street and smashed up a few cars, before flipping over.

After the jump, the mammoth SUV that caused this destruction.