Hulk Smash So Many Cars in Columbia Heights

It's cool, just call metro and blame the B2.

In a month.

Ugh, I walked past the scene this morning, and it looks even worse in person. Front axels completly ripped in half and laying in the street. Most of the owners were out with their cars by then, taking pictures of the wreckage. One poor guy, whose auto must have been a rental car, was angrily pleading with someone on his cell, clearly getting hosed, big time.

this has to be malicious, right? no one could possibly damage that many cars to that extent purely by accident.

This had to have been a very large auto to do so much damage... possibly a DC owned auto?

maybe it was a Maryland driver that didn't even realize they hit anything

What the hell compelled that person to do that?

I'd say either drunk driver, joyriding kids, or both.

Anyway, you just know they're from Maryland. Those people are worse than the Devil.

Obviously another mutant has escaped from the lab

Are any of the car owners on the Metro board? Then we can blame that unruly B2 bus again and everyone gets a nice big check.

Otherwise, the car owners go to their insurance companies and rates go up.

Either way (Metro out $$ or higher insurance rates), we all end up paying for this.

this is proof that Maryland and Virginia drivers are terrible at parallel parking.

The people living in that block must be pretty sound sleepers.
When out on the street there arose such a clatter,

No one sprang from the bed to see what was the matter?

Away to the window no one flew like a flash,

No one tore open the shutters and threw up the sash?

The moon on the breast of the new-broken glass

Gave the lustre of mid-day to a fleeing car hitting the gas,

lemon - saw the same thing you're talking about. Happened over a memorial day weekend. Apparently the driver in that case wasnt drunk at all.

It was, in fact, a Maryland driver that caused the damage described here (not that I'm judging). The driver and his two fellow passengers were taken away in three separate ambulances followed by police cruisers.

We do not yet know what caused it (lost control of vehicle, drunk driving, who knows?) but the destruction of the 11 cars, which spanned two blocks going southbound, was pretty significant.

One tire with its axle was lost from the offending vehicle itself after it smashed into the first couple cars (the Saturn lost a tire and axle, too), and then it skidded the rest of the block with sparks flying everywhere before it smashed into a line of parked cars. The impact was so severe that it pushed four cars far enough that he made himself a brand new, legal parking spot.

I never saw Jim Graham show up, unusually, but the cops arrived at the scene very quickly.

*phew* I'm glad my car was parked north of Girard (on the southbound side, too ... gotta be ready for Tuesday street cleaning, you know). This happened to me (and only me, apparently) last Halloween on Girard halfway between 11th and 13th. At least my car wasn't totaled.

Looks to me that it was intentional. That's effed up.

See, the problem isn't that a maniac plowed into cars. The problem is that people own cars in DC. Actually, there is NO excuse to OWN a car while living in the city.

Clearly, the city has taken a more aggressive stance towards parking violations during street sweeping.

wow, pants, that does not sound like fun.

i watched an SUV with virginia plates (see, it isn't all marylanders!) hit a parked car pretty damn hard on belmont (between columbia and 18th) this past friday. they just backed up, pulled back into the lane, and drove off.

we called the cops, gave them a description of the car and told them the plate number, left a note on the windshield telling the unlucky owner what we saw and what we did, and walked home. i hope they caught the bastards.

Monkey:

How did I miss that stunningly stupid anti-car tirade?

Hipsters with no real life experience demanding that we do away with the very vehicles that make their little hipster lives possible?

And add in a little annoying self-righteousness?

Damn. You stop wasting your life blogging for one or two days, and look what you miss.

Since I had to move my car across the street for tomorrow's street cleaning, I took a stroll a block down the street and took some pictures of what's left of the aftermath.

And to answer the question of how they can do that at 25: they can't. Not only that but there are stop signs at Girard and Fairmont. I see people blow through them all the time, which is probably what happened here. The Saturn (the minivan/SUV thing) is about halfway down the block between Fairmont and Euclid.

Also if there was anything south of Euclid last night towards Clifton it's completely gone now. Everything I saw (including debris) was limited to the block between Fairmont and Euclid.

I've narrowed down the Euclid culprit to either lei lines, Indian burial grounds, or the dreaded Cthulhu. He's got a tentacle in every pie, that one.

Although, I might go so far as to blame Creedence as well. John Fogarty hasn't been the same since he split up with Fantasy Records and neither has Euclid Street. Coincidence?

From ten feet I witnessed a lady drill a parked car on Fairmont off 14th. Stunned, she got out of the car, assessed her wrongdoing, and then casually drove off. I got her plates and was able to help the victim, my neighbor, along with DCPD, in tracking her down. The funniest thing, State Farm calls me a week later and says the bitch is trying to deny the charges. And this, after her front panel fell off at the scene. Total idiot.

This, last night, and other examples spell out collectively a much bigger problem emerging in CH. You have an influx of pedestrians yet absolutely no traffic calming measures until you get west of 16th, and then only on Lanier out to Calvert. DDOT needs to lay down some funds and install speed humps along Euclid, Fairmont, Girard, and Harvard between 11th and 14th. Hopefully it doesn't take a few people dying to finally open their eyes.

Please, no more speed bumps!! Traffic calming measures DON'T WORK on drunk people. In fact, they will likely cause them to lose control when they hit one at 50 mph. You really think that someone who caused that much damage would have given a hoot about a speed hump?

The speed limit is 25 MPH. If you want the speed limit to be 5 MPH, then argue for that legislation, rather than installing speed bumps, which not only can cause damage to cars but limit emergency vehicles' effectiveness.

And besides, the pedestrians getting killed are mostly by buses, anyway. I can't think of a single pedestrian fatality on a side street as a result of someone driving too fast. They almost all happen at busy, heavily traveled interchanges.

DCMama: Is a speed bump really going to stop a non-city driver following their GPS's instructions from driving down your street?

If you check out the MPD website, there's info on the Automated Speed Enforcement. We're not talking about a couple of miles over. Some vehicles have been going 100mph over the limit.