It takes a lot of skill, or lack thereof, to crash a car you’re not even driving. In this case, a towing attempt gone horribly wrong resulted in the vehicle intended to be towed crashing into a restaurant not just once, but twice. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office not only tells us how it all went down, but it shared security camera footage that shows the whole thing.
On July 30, a maroon Mercury Montego parked in front of AutoZone in University Place, Washington. The driver left it there overnight, telling employees that he would be back to tow it away since it wasn’t running well. He returned at 3:45 a.m. in a white Honda Pilot with a tow dolly to follow through on his promise. It wasn’t until 5:15 that the driver began pulling the car not on the dolly, but using a tow rope, which snapped before he even got out of the lot. He tried to secure the car again, but failed epically at 5:50 when the car rolled back across the lot and crashed into the Pho and Teriyaki restaurant next to the AutoZone. The man made a valiant effort to stop the car from the outside using muscles and sheer force of will, but to no avail. He jumped away from the car right before the crash and appeared to avoid injury. That would be bad enough, but things got much worse.
But wait, there’s more
The Honda Pilot then pulled up in front of the restaurant, and the driver attached the tow rope once again. He succeeded in pulling the car to the other side of the lot, only for it to roll back across the lot and crash into the restaurant a second time. Once again, he pulled it away, only for the Montego to get caught up along a retaining wall and curb thanks to an amazingly long tow rope, leaving him unable to control it. At this point, he abandoned the car, which was now likely damaged beyond any repair you could buy at AutoZone, and left the scene.
There are so many questions here. Why didn’t he use the dolly he was towing behind the Pilot? Why did he continue to trust the tow rope that kept failing with ever more disastrous results? Why did he use such a long tow rope? Why didn’t the woman who got out of the Pilot during the third attempt help at all?
Also, kudos to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office for using the perfect soundtrack for this video: “Yakety Sax,” better known as the Benny Hill theme. They are investigating this fiasco as a hit-and-run, which is appropriate, and amazing considering the car that hit the restaurant didn’t even have a driver. This joins our list of the dumbest car crashes we’ve ever seen.