Full story at the BBC.
I've tracked down the exact house* on Google Maps (to the left of the red arrow marked 'Helsby Running Club'), and the strange thing is, the house concerned is actually on the inside of a gentle right hand bend on the A56, looking at it the way the gritter was travelling (i.e. it crossed the opposite lane first, then hit the house). Normally, cars hits the high risk houses that are at the top of a T junction or the outside of sharp bends or similar.
* From the BBC:
* From Google Maps:
From the BBC:
The silver Ford Focus was driven into the house on York Road in Eastleigh, Hampshire, at about 04:30 BST on Friday.
Police said the front of the vehicle ended up in the lounge and that the road was closed while surveyors assessed how to move the car safely.
The driver, 21, ran off on foot and was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.
Yup, the perils of living in an end terrace.
I would assume the driver was heading south on Southampton Road and tried to turn right into York Road.
This pic from Google Maps shows the layout, Southampton Road runs left to right, the car hit the house to the left of the side door.
From The Bristol Post:
A woman has died and residents have been evacuated after a car crashed into a house in Clevedon.
The woman who was killed was in the house and the occupants of the vehicle, a man and a woman, have been arrested and are currently in police custody.
The incident took place shortly before 8.30pm last night (Wednesday, April 18), on Yeolands Drive.
I've not tracked down the house on Google Maps yet, but I guess that like in most of these cases, the house is at the top of a T-junction or similar.
Top tips:
- don't buy a house at the top of a T-junction;
- if you own one, replace your front garden wall with concrete blocks;
- town planners and developers, please don't put houses at the top of T-junctions.
From the BBC:
Two members of a family suffered broken bones when a car ploughed into their home as they sat watching television.
Robert Beattie, his wife Mel and 15-year-old daughter Tash were sitting in their living room when the car smashed into the house. The woman and girl are recovering in hospital following Friday's crash.
A 26-year-old man from Worcester has been arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving and released under investigation.
The road is easy enough to find on Google Maps, the house appears to be the one on the right as you turn in from Battenhall Road. So exactly the location most likely to be hit by a car.
KRMG News (Tulsa), 22 September, Major damage after car hits house. Possible drunk driver ran away
The West Australian, 23 September, Car ploughs into house in Perth's south
Ipswich Star, 3 October, House damaged during crash between van and car in Suffolk towns
BBC, 3 October, Medieval bridge in Bradford-on-Avon damaged by stolen car
Slough & South Bucks Express, 3 October, Car used to 'significantly damage' window of fish and chip shop. Poorly worded headline, it means "was used for the purpose of" and not "it used to, but doesn't any more".
Daily Mirror, 8 October, Couple drive prized car into living room of house to protect it from Hurricane Matthew storm damage
Road and Track, 10 October, Perfectly Reasonable Man Parks E30 M3 in Living Room to Avoid Hurricane Damage
Thejournal.ie, 11 October, 'Substantial damage' caused as car crashes into front wall of house
12 News (Arizona), 19 October, A family of four is OK after a car slammed into the front of their home, crashing through the master bathroom early Wednesday.
Clydebank Post, 21 October, Drumchapel house damaged by tractor at 3am prompting police investigation
New Haven Register (Connecticut), 21 October, SUV crashes into house, gas meter in New Haven
Follownews (Massachusetts), 21 October, Car Crashes Into Home, Causing Serious Damage
UPDATE from the BBC, 22 October/today, Driver smashes car through garage wall in Brownhills
Spotted by MBK in The Daily Mail:
A groom who rented a £240,000 Ferrari for his wedding was lucky to escape unhurt after crashing it into a friend's front garden.
Usman Ali, 25, who works as a tyre fitter for his father's garage, is understood to have put down a £5,000 deposit to use the Ferrari 458 Spider for his wedding weekend.
But on Sunday, the day after the wedding, his foot apparently tripped on the car mat and he pressed the accelerator rather than the brake as he arrived at his friend's house ahead of further celebrations of his nuptials with wife Sakina Parveen.
The luxury car – which can go from 0 to 60mph in just three seconds – shot forward and smashed into the front of a terraced house...
Neighbours on the street in Burnley, Lancashire, watched as Mr Ali somehow emerged unscathed out of the wrecked Italian supercar, which had been worth nearly five times more than their own houses...
A friend of Mr Ali, who still lives with his father in their £55,000 family home, said he was a car fanatic who owns a Golf GTI, and rented the supercar for his wedding.
I've not done one of these for a while, so here are some of the highlights of the year so far:
Daily Record:
A FAMILY escaped unhurt when a car crashed into their living room as they sat watching TV.
Christine Armit was relaxing with partner Patrik Benneryd and her children Ryan and Emily when the Honda Civic ploughed through the wall. A neighbour said the motor shunted the sofa – where Ryan, 24, had been lying – across the room.
Wales Online:
A car has crashed through a shop window in a Carmarthenshire business park.
Police and the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service were called to the Cross Hands Business Park, near Ammanford, at 11.08am today. The vehicle had crashed into the window of the Home Bargains store but no-one was injured in the collision.
The Telegraph:
This is the moment an out-of-control car ploughed through the front window of an estate agents on a busy high street.
The driver, who was miraculously unhurt, smashed a Nissan Micra into Roger Dean estate agents in Stockport, Greater Manchester. The astonishing CCTV footage, captured around 4:50pm on Sunday, shows the moment she sped into the shop window before attempting to reverse out of the wreckage.
Interestingly, the article doesn't say whether any estate agents were hurt :-)
The Press:
POLICE are searching for two men after a car crashed into a North Yorkshire shop.
The crash happened in the early hours of Sunday in Starbeck High Street, near Harrogate, when a black BMW crashed through the window of Staiano motorcycle shop after ploughing through bollards and street furniture.
Evening Standard:
A car has careered through the front of a mobile phone shop after being pursued by police though Crouch End.
The car sped up Crouch End Broadway before smashing through the window of the shop in Park Road. Police later recovered a large quantity of what are believed to be drugs from the car, and the driver was arrested after he was chased on foot.
… a sinkhole, cow news and a car crashing into a house.
H/t, Dinero, from the BBC:
A dual carriageway is to remain shut after a huge sinkhole opened up as a result of a burst water main.
The northbound carriageway of the A249 between Key Street and Bobbing roundabouts, near Sittingbourne in Kent, has been closed for a week.
More than 1,000 homes and three schools on the Isle of Sheppey were affected by the burst main, with some without water for two days.
H/t James Higham, from The Des Moines Register:
Check out this video of a cow in Montana rolling a hay bale.
The National Agricultural Institute shared this video on their Facebook page last week and it has so far gained more than 10,000 likes.
From The Daily Mail:
It's a parking bay window! Vauxhall Corsa skids on ice and ends up embedded in someone's front room
From the BBC:
A woman died and five people were hurt when a car ploughed into a coffee shop.
The woman in her 70s was declared dead at the scene after the Audi crashed into Costa on The Green, Westerham, Kent at 10:30 GMT. South East Coast Ambulance (Secamb) said five more people were taken to hospital, four with serious injuries and one with minor injuries.
The centre of Westerham was closed while emergency services remained at the scene.
From the BBC:
At least 13 people were hurt when a bus hit the offices of a guide dog charity after a collision involving a car.
The single-decker crashed near Peterborough city centre at about 11:43 GMT, Cambridgeshire Police said. There were no fatalities and all the casualties had what were described as minor injuries. Nobody in the building was hurt.
Stagecoach confirmed one of its buses had been in the crash with a car. The road was cordoned-off near Church Walk.
It's the new cows, I'm telling you.
Cow attacks and sinkholes have gone mainstream, so I shall mainly be raising awareness of car attacks like this one.
From The Evening Standard:
A motorist had some explaining to do today after crashing into someone else’s £1million railings.
The driver lost control of the vehicle while driving around in an industrial estate in north west London. He crashed the motor into the one-off metal fencing, seriously damaging the gates and surrounding posts.
The car was spotted being driven earlier in the day with trade plates, and it is not thought the owner of the car was driving at the time of the crash. A spokesperson for the Met Police said no one was hurt in the incident, which took place in Park Royal at lunchtime yesterday.
The railings were installed at a cost of £1million 2003 and were thought to be worth in the region of £900,000 prior to the crash.
From the BBC:
A car crashed into a house in Sheffield, damaging the property but injuring no one.
Salma Zahid, who was in the house, said: "I heard such a big crash. It was like an earthquake."
An interesting simile; if I could be bothered, I'd track down a first hand account of an earthquake where somebody says "It felt like a car had hit the building".
From The Evening Standard:
These pictures reveal the devastation wreaked by a runaway bus which rolled backwards down a hill and crashed into the front of a family home.
The images, taken by resident Natasha Ottley, show huge cracks in the brickwork in the now "totally unsafe" property after the empty 174 bus hit it.
Eye witnesses claimed the bus was empty at the time and the driver chased after it to get back at the wheel after apparently leaving the handbrake off but it was travelling too quickly.
I'd say the house looks to be in surprisingly good condition, to say it just got hit by the proverbial bus. Hopefully they can get it patched up again fairly quickly.
Top tip: don't buy a house on a T-junction at the bottom of a hill.
... says ViewFromTheSolent who spotted this in The Portsmouth News:
A HOMEOWNER said he is lucky to be alive after a lorry crashed into his house this morning.
Anne Wiles, 66, and Len Wiles, 61, of Brockhurst Road, Gosport, had been sleeping when a 7.5tonne Royal Mail lorry ploughed into the house.
It is stuck 4ft into the building, and has demolished the stairwell.
Mr Wiles said: "I woke up at about 6am and I heard a smash. I was lucky because I had been planning to go downstairs 10 minutes earlier. We opened the door and there were no stairs – instead we could see a lorry.
"The fire brigade rescued us and were brilliant. All the emergency services were absolutely brilliant, and our neighbours."
Here's the punchline...
The couple said they had only recently sold their home, but now things will be on hold.
What's estate agent-speak for "Has no front wall or interior stairs"?
From the BBC:
A car has been found embedded in the wall of a primary school in Birmingham after a crash in the early hours.
The car crashed through two sets of railings at Springfield Primary School and into the school office, said Birmingham City Council.
The school is closed while the wreckage is cleaned-up and the damage assessed.
By cross-referencing Google Maps and the BBC's picture, it looks as if the car went straight across the roundabout.
And it's a mystery to me why they've closed the whole school just because one little office is temporarily unavailable, it's a huge great building. Any excuse, I suppose.
... you're not even safe in your own four walls any more:
31 August 2012: Couple tell of shock as car hits house wall
15 September 2012: Lotus sports car punches hole in house wall in rush-hour crash
17 September 2012: Couple’s lucky escape as a speeding vehicle crashes into their UPSTAIRS bedroom
9 October 2012: Car crashes into Brantham house while family are inside
13 October 2012: Three people have been taken to hospital in Derby after a car crashed into a row of houses.
15 October 2012: Car crashes into Norfolk teenager's bedroom
15 October 2012: Three injured as car smashes into houses
5 November 2012: Car crashes into house in Hethersett
22 November 2012: Ascot car crashes into house trapping woman and baby
29 November 2012: Two arrested after car crashes into Peterborough house
30 November 2012: Shocking moment drink driver smashes into pub at 60mph burying landlord under wall
30 November 2012: Shoppers miraculously escape serious injury after BMW 4x4 ploughs into sandwich shop
Am I going to have to start doing monthly "car attack" round-ups?
