A woman driving in Irvine says she was stopped at a red light moments before despite dashcam footage showing her understeering into a traffic light at high speed.
SoCal resident and Redditor /u/Lightster shared dashcam footage from Irvine near The District from earlier this week (Oct 26,2024) to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing a woman driver in a Mercedes GLE 350 understeering at a relatively high speed into a traffic light.
Distracted? Possibly.
Check out his dashcam footage below.
[OC] She hit the traffic light; the pedestrian and I both wondered “is this real life?”
byu/lightster inIdiotsInCars
The accident happened at the intersection of Barranca Pkwy and Jamboree Rd in Irvine (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As his dashcam footage shows, OP is stopped on Jamboree Rd, ready to go straight, when his dashcam captures a woman driver in a Mercedes GLE turning left at a high rate of speed.
Instead of making the turn, her trajectory sends her careening toward a traffic light.
She hits the traffic light hard, practically totaling her Mercedes.
There’s A Pole There
byu/MikeCoxmaull inorangecounty
Witnesses and Good Samaritans around the accident rush to the woman’s aid checking out if she’s OK and picking up large pieces of crashed Mercedes in the immediate area.
“After I downloaded the footage to my phone from my dashcam, I walked over to the scene to see if the police wanted my footage. She was telling the officer that she had been sitting at the red turn signal before making the turn. She seemed to have a lot of speed to be taking off from a red light, but those turn lanes are pretty lengthy.”
“The police saw my footage and initially thought she was trying to beat the red light, but based on traffic flow after the accident, I think the light was still green for several seconds.”
“Fortunately, she missed the pedestrian and all other vehicles. Her car is almost certainly totaled, but the traffic light seemed to take the incident in stride.”
It appears the only injury the woman suffered was a cut finger.
” I think I heard that the driver cut her finger, which is a pretty remarkable outcome considering the force of the impact.”
While many commenters were skeptical of the woman’s account, at least one Redditor said it’s possible that what she told police was what actually happened.
“I suppose it’s possible that she was distracted while waiting several cars back at the red, finally noticed that the cars in front had driven off, and floored it to catch up,” /u/L4m3rThanYou replied.
Regardless if she was a red light runner or not, she was not paying attention and is now out of a vehicle.
Thankfully, she and no one else was hurt by her inattentiveness.
