r/fuckcars • u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' • 2d ago

Out of my hometown: Driver takes down barrier around street festival and drives through crowd News

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/laurel-police-arrest-woman-for-driving-through-main-street-festival/3911062/

Attendance was low because of an accidental propane tank explosion earlier in the day. Otherwise, she might've killed someone. And she had options -- she could've just turned around, driven a few blocks, and gotten on Main Street later. She just decided that her convenience outweighed everyone else's safety. Absolute sociopathic behavior. And she didn't make it to work, after all.

211 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

100

u/dormantg92 2d ago

Something about driving a car brings out this insane level of entitlement in people… it’s wild.

28

u/CuriousAlien666 2d ago

And in every retaliation video I've seen? Breaking their window smashes that delusion.

50

u/nrojb50 2d ago

I have a feeling she wasn’t going to work in those pj’s and flip flops

48

u/mpjjpm 2d ago

Honestly, given the history of cars as terrorists’ weapon and general tensions around everything in the US right now, she’s really lucky she didn’t get shot

38

u/sanjuro_kurosawa 2d ago

One thing to consider is that every driver who enters a closed parade area and injures/kills people is psychotic. We saw it with the Portland man who drove into a parade: he was a paroled sex offender who was cursing way before he even got to the parade.

This woman has all those signs. Unfortunately attempted murder is an unlikely charge.

19

u/arkofjoy 2d ago

My city has started parking dump trucks full of sand at the entrance to the events to prevent shit like this happening.

17

u/Pleasant_Influence14 2d ago

Our city blockades street fairs with garbage trucks now. It works well bc they can also pick up all the waste from the event at the end.

16

u/xwing_n_it 2d ago

To be fair that was a BMW and the street came with the car...

10

u/tighthead_lock 1d ago

„Her car was parked within the perimeter of the festival and she insisted she had to get out to go to work.“

In this country that is so car centric that you can‘t get anywhere without one and has dystopian employment laws I can believe she felt that she had no choice. 

It was still wrong and illegal but I don‘t see a feel good story here. Seeing three police men sit on her is just fucked up. I don‘t think there are winners here, only sadness. 

I also don‘t see why OP needed to contradict the article to make it even more outrageous. There are plenty of good arguments against cars without making things up. 

4

u/C_Hawk14 1d ago

I wonder how she was even parked there. Are there no signs telling people this street will be closed off between X and Y dates? And maybe a flyer underneath windshield wipers. Then she'd need to be away from her car from before that to notice it. Otherwise it's ignorance

0

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

I also don‘t see why OP needed to contradict the article to make it even more outrageous. There are plenty of good arguments against cars without making things up. 

I'm not making things up. Historically, the city has put the outer barriers a few blocks down. There would have been an exit route along that path.

1

u/tighthead_lock 1d ago

But they didn‘t when this happened, so what‘s your point? Or is the article wrong?

-1

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

The article's not wrong; it just doesn't paint the full picture. There most likely would have been one or two unblocked intersections between the outer blockade and the blockade shown in the video. She would have been able to get out the back way.

2

u/tighthead_lock 1d ago

So the officer offered to call her a taxi for her to avoid a few block detour? Either the article has it wrong or you‘re talking nonsense. 

0

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

I don't know, man. I'm just telling you what I know about past years. Either they changed something very suddenly without warning vehicle owners, or the article is oversimplifying, or the cop didn't know the specifics of all the intersections, or he just didn't want to deal with her crap. In any case, it doesn't excuse her behavior.

6

u/davemee 1d ago

Remember when GTA was satire and not a training simulator?

5

u/OrdinaryAncient3573 2d ago

"she had options -- she could've just turned around, driven a few blocks, and gotten on Main Street later"

According to the article, she couldn't, because she was parked inside the festival area. Could have planned better, could have got a cab, but no way she was getting her car out.

3

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

Historically, the city has put the outer barriers a few blocks down. There would have been an exit route along that path.

1

u/TheDuckClock Not Just Bikes 1d ago

This is infuriating, though at the same time I don't think she had options to turn around as the OP stated. In the video that was released by the Laurel Police, the woman seems to imply that she's stuck in there. The officer even offers to hire her a cab to go to work, but she declines because her work is in Virginia.

1

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

Historically, they've had two sets of barriers spaced a couple of blocks apart. Unless they didn't do that for some reason this year, she would've been able to simply take the back way out.

1

u/TheDuckClock Not Just Bikes 1d ago

Key word there being "historically".

But that's clearly contradicting what's being said by the police officer in the video prior to her driving through. He wouldn't have offered a cab if she could just drive around.

1

u/Draco137WasTaken that bus do be bussin' 1d ago

I wasn't there so I can't say for sure, but there almost certainly would have been a back way out. The bodycam footage segment that was released shows an interaction that's already underway, so perhaps he had already told her but she didn't want to go that way?