Watch as Stalled Car in Automatic Carwash Causes Accident
Just another reason to wash your car by hand.
Automatic car washes have two things going for them: they're fast, and they're convenient. Alternatively, one could visit a quarter-driven, drive-up wash station for a few minutes and apply some elbow grease via pressure washer and soapy broom—but that's a fairly harsh option on your paint. Typically, these places won't let you bring your own bucket and microfiber sponge, which creates a situation whereby a lot of people choose to wash their car at home. Since that can take up to a half an hour (or more) to do a decent job, it make sense wh most people choose the five minutes in an automatic car wash.
In this case, user /u/spanotsi posted a thread on Reddit with the below footage from his dash cam. It depicts his adventurous day at a car wash in his 2014 Chevy Silverado when he, unfortunately, got stuck behind a woman who wasn’t having the best of luck with her car.
The video begins with the Silverado driver pulling into one of the two lanes of a Delta Sonic car wash. A large line in the second lane draws suspicion early in the clip, which is confirmed as it is pointed out that another driver’s car, a white Nissan Maxima, has stalled in the front of the line, causing a jam. With the help of an attendant, the Maxima was able to be moved.
To both our and the Silverado driver’s surprise, the Maxima was then directed to continue into the automatic carwash, despite the car stalling just moments before. Sure enough, the vehicle stalls again, and the panicked driver attempts to put her car in park and exit the vehicle while still in the car wash. The Silverado driver reportedly honked for over 30 seconds, but it was too late; the automatic car wash system pulled his truck into the rear of the Maxima, and eventually a driver behind him in an SUV was pulled into his car, and so on, causing a combined six collisions between the Nissan, Silverado, and the SUV behind them.
The Silverado drier filed a police report which placed blame on the Delta Sonic car wash—presumably for not having the proper safety measures in place to protect against this type of incident, or possibly for allowing the Maxima driver to continue into the wash despite the known issue the car was experiencing. No matter who is to blame, this certainly shows one benefit of having a dash camera.
