BMW plunges 7 floors from parking garage

[RickFLM4]

Originally Posted by MalibuBimmer

The driver was certainly at fault, but the garage design was also inherently unsafe. A jury will probably allocate liability. I'd give her 80-85% and the garage operator the rest. Buildings and parking structures should be built with the idiot in mind. And people do make mistakes. That's why we have airbags and seat belts. (And many people -- proving the idiot theory -- try to avoid using them.)

As an example why the parking structure was unsafe, take the situation where a driver is backing out of a space and gets rear ended by some other driver, pushing the backing out car through the feeble "safety cables." Is that accident solely the fault of a driver who just rear ended another driver backing out (an accident that probably has happened a couple of times in the United States while you were reading this post), or do we hold the garage operator accountable too? The answer is pretty clear to me.

This. If she had landed on the SUV and killed its driver, it would primarily be her fault for hitting the gas but no one expects a car to fall from a parking garage when driving by. Seems like the garage requires inspection and / or code requires review. This shouldn't happen for the safety of people on the ground as much as for an idiot driver doing something stupid. Fortunately in this case, she survived and didn't land on the SUV.

[Eau_Rouge111]

Originally Posted by ska///235i

Great...another driver giving bmw drivers a bad name

Hope she gets well soon tho

Yup...but we have nothing on those "crowd hunter " Mustang drivers!

[DDD31]

Originally Posted by ArcticRik

She will probably sue stating she didn't know how to put the car in park -_-

Either that or go with the one tire was 1.3 psi. too low excuse causing unintended loss of control.

[MalibuBimmer]

Originally Posted by RickFLM4

This. If she had landed on the SUV and killed its driver, it would primarily be her fault for hitting the gas but no one expects a car to fall from a parking garage when driving by. Seems like the garage requires inspection and / or code requires review. This shouldn't happen for the safety of people on the ground as much as for an idiot driver doing something stupid. Fortunately in this case, she survived and didn't land on the SUV.

If she had landed on the SUV I believe the garage operator and she would be jointly and severally liable. Her "share" would be probably 80%, but to the extent she or her insurance company could not pay for all of the damages (such as a catastrophic paralysis suffered by the driver of the SUV), the garage operator and its insurance company would have to step up.

Everybody was lucky in this situation - the woman who crashed, the driver of the SUV and the garage operator.

[Fedie]

Originally Posted by Chihuahua

You don't know how prophetic this post was. Or maybe you do.

Woman is now suing.

Of course she is, only in "merica"

[MalibuBimmer]

Originally Posted by Fedie

Of course she is, only in "merica"

I'm pretty sure in European countries, and in Canada and Down Under, parking lot operators wouldn't be allowed to use flimsy cables to protect against cars rolling forward. So, yes, only in America. Where in many states (usually in the South) we have shitty and poorly enforced building standards for commercial buildings. Because it's all about the profits. (And, yes to be sure, shitty drivers who don't pay attention.) But to turn a foolish and common mistake into a death penalty offense is something we should not countenance.

I'm sorry she's injured, she's mostly at fault, but I'm glad she's suing.

[drjoe66]

Will she drive a car again? Glad I don’t live close to Austin.....
Im sorry, but if a driver his the gas instead of the breaks they don’t deserve to drive ever again.

[Scout10]

Time to check your shorts for the other driver ! ! oooohhh so close !

[thaalrasha]

Originally Posted by drjoe66

Will she drive a car again? Glad I don’t live close to Austin.....
Im sorry, but if a driver his the gas instead of the breaks they don’t deserve to drive ever again.

Or drive on canyon or mountain road more often and sue nature when they fall off the road. Glad she survived but if you don't know which pedals does what then you are a danger to other people on the road.

[N & M]

Originally Posted by ZX-10RR

Ridiculous
So if I mistake the trigger on my hand gun for the safety and shoot myself. Can I sue?:

Unbelievable. Instead of gratitude for surviving such a horrific ordeal she chooses to sue. Wow; I will never make fun of silly warning labels or safety processes in products anymore.

[VCP]

She clearly should have been in a Hyundai

[ArturPL]

Originally Posted by RABAUKE

That's crazy, the front doors still opened. Great engineering, hope she's ok.

Would be a different story if it wouldn't be a coupe.

[Yeru]

Lot of cliches coming together here: American female driver + BMW 428i convertible + automatic transmission + no personal accountability + blame the other guy first

[Blindside_137]

A mistake was made

[MalibuBimmer]

Originally Posted by Yeru

Lot of cliches coming together here: American female driver + BMW 428i convertible + automatic transmission + no personal accountability + blame the other guy first

+dangerously designed parking structure

Robust cables would have prevented the accident altogether. While I enjoy reading about Darwin Award winners, for doing truly stupid things, I don't believe this woman deserved the death penalty for a mistake that's made all the time. When a mistake is made all the time you design to make sure the mistake isn't fatal. True, here, it wasn't fatal, but it often would be.

The cables were flimsy and didn't perform as they should have. Blame the woman, but blame the garage operator (and builder) as well for a poor, unsafe design.

[clag]

Originally Posted by MalibuBimmer

+dangerously designed parking structure

Robust cables would have prevented the accident altogether. While I enjoy reading about Darwin Award winners, for doing truly stupid things, I don't believe this woman deserved the death penalty for a mistake that's made all the time. When a mistake is made all the time you design to make sure the mistake isn't fatal. True, here, it wasn't fatal, but it often would be.

The cables were flimsy and didn't perform as they should have. Blame the woman, but blame the garage operator (and builder) as well for a poor, unsafe design.

I agree, this is the second time this garage has had an issue recently:

http://kxan.com/2016/09/09/vehicle-d...wntown-austin/

[AndrewC1989]

Originally Posted by Eternal

very few things on the internet stun me. This...wow.

Go watch two girls one cup.

[CanAutM3]

Originally Posted by wdb

Headon car-to-car crashes double the speed of this impact.

Well, yes and no. In a face-to-face collision, both cars absorb the energy by deformation. So the force of impact of two cars traveling at 45mph in opposite directions is essentially the same as hitting a static wall at 45mph.

[jpnh]

Originally Posted by Chihuahua

You don't know how prophetic this post was. Or maybe you do.

Woman is now suing.

I'm sure she'll sue BMW as well as the parking garage owner for failing to prevent bad consequences to her incompetence.

I wonder how much off a run up to the restraining cables there was before the launch off the edge

[stefan]

Another argument against the automatic. Driving shouldn't be that easy that someone can just press the wrong pedal and potentially kill people.

[Stu Pedasho]

Police said the woman driving the BMW, who had serious injuries from the crash, mistook the gas pedal for the brakes and crashed through the parking .

Things that make you go......Hmmmmm......

[jpdchicago]

That is why I am never moving to Florida. Cases of 80+ Year old drivers mistaking pedals and killing or injuring people very common there...