Poor driving habits in a manual car and simply not paying attention caused this Subaru driver’s costly mistake.

Matawan commuter and Redditor /u/IllSeeYouInTheFog shared head-shaking dashcam footage from earlier this May (May 13, 2025) showing a driver in a manual Subaru Crosstrek not paying attention on a slight incline rolling back into him hard, likely costing upwards of $1,000+ in damages.

Check out their dashcam footage below with the original Reddit thread linked here.

The incident happened in Matawan on NJ-34 right across from Cheesequake Elementary School and the Glow Express Car Wash (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)

As the dashcam footage shows, this part of NJ-34 is a slight incline.

As such, drivers, regardless of what transmission they have, must stay on the brakes at all times.

In front of OP is a driver in a Subaru Crosstrek, most likely with a manual transmission.

The Crosstrek driver is stepping on their brakes, apparently, not hard enough, as we see them roll back into OP, hard, gravity multiplying the force of that 3,000+ lbs Subaru.

“Likely just rested their foot on the brake pedal enough to trigger it, but not enough to give sufficient clamping force,” /u/UnSpec7 explained to another confused Redditor what was going on there.

“My bet, they saw the red, and went to their phone as fast as they could because phone addiction, and so were too distracted to notice they didn’t press on the pedal hard enough and to notice their rolling.”

We see the Crosstrek driver’s bumper flex with the brunt of the force, likely causing $1,000+ in damage to OP’s car (if insurance gets involved and it’s priced accordingly.)

The driver’s excuse? According to a police officer, who was called shortly afterwards to facilitate communications between the two drivers and for documentation, the Crosstrek driver’s foot slipped off the clutch.

 He told the cop and I that he let his foot off the clutch and didn’t notice,” OP clarified.

Regardless, clutch, brake, and manual transmission, drivers must pay attention to what’s going on at all times.

“Driver skipped leg day on their brake leg,” the top comment from 4ArgumentsSake reads.

“I think the lack of pressing the brake was the bigger problem,” /u/Jakobites hilariously put it .

In New Jersey, rolling back into someone like this might be interpreted by law enforcement as careless driving, a less serious offense that carries a fine between $50 $200, two points on your record, and time and fees for court.