A tree saved the day on Aug. 29, when the brakes failed on a car that couldn’t make a hairpin turn on Park St. N and Eighth Ave. The driver avoided the creek, a parked truck, a boat and the car came to rest against a big tree. None of the car’s passengers appeared to be injured.
Just moments after the incident, the driver of the older model Oldsmobile was perplexed as to how this could happen. She said, “The vehicle is safetied, it’s registered … and the brakes completely failed!”
She tried to slow down for the hairpin turn and that’s when she found she had no brakes.
“I was trying neutral, trying to throw it into different gears, to see if I could just slow down the transmission somehow.”
Going too fast to steer the car into the first set of trees on the street, with the car heading toward a property, the driver steered the vehicle around a parked half-ton and into the tree.
She was reaching desperately for the emergency brake, but it wasn’t her own car, and just couldn’t find the pedal in the pressure of the moment.
“When you’re in your own car, hopefully you’re more aware of the reach to the e-brake.”
The front end of the car has some damage.
