We live in an era where distractions are everywhere, including for drivers.
If you don’t receive a call, someone may send you a text, like one of your posts on social media, or instant message you on one of the gazillion apps that are now hip. There’s no escape unless you throw away your smartphone.
Now, we don’t know what exactly distracted the driver from the following video but her mind was clearly far away from the previous-generation Lexus ES she was driving. The footage shows the sedan leaving the parking lot of a residential building and suddenly stopping — presumably because the driver forgot to take something from the house.
Also watch: Rider Gets Distracted By Phone, Crashes Almost Immediately
Nothing happens for about fifteen seconds as the driver stays inside the stationary car. At one point she opens the door and exits the vehicle which immediately starts moving forward. Thankfully, the Lexus manages to avoid a parked BMW i3 but somehow finds its way to the street down a winding alley. The sedan then crosses the road, narrowly missing a white sedan, and comes to a halt after hitting a neighbor’s dumpsters.
Our theory about what caused the car to suddenly develop a mind of its own and “break free” is that the driver forgot the transmission either in Drive or in Neutral as she exited the car. You can see that the brake lights are on seconds before the car starts moving. As soon as she gets out, the lights go off and the Lexus accelerates as if it had waited to escape for a long time.
Having watched the video several times, we tend to believe she forgot the car in Drive. If she had left the lever in Neutral, there’s no way the car would have accelerated so quickly — it would have crept forward first because of the incline and then it would have picked up speed. What do you think?