We’re no strangers to wild and perplexing car crashes here at Jalopnik, but this one might take the cake. A witness recorded a green Ford Mustang Mach-E with its hazard lights on, dragging against a K-Rail divider while the driver appeared to be praying before the barrier ended and the Mach-E veered across the road and t-boned a Mitsubishi Mirage.
The video was posted to TikTok by user Marty.Byrde3 who claimed to have recorded the incident on their drive to work in the Bay Area city of San Carlos. When the camera captured the driver of the crashing Mustang Mach-E, the driver appeared to have both hands off the steering wheel, and instead joined together in prayer. The driver did not appear to be unconscious or incapacitated in any other way that could cause the incident, but as the K-Rail came to an end, the Mach-E instantly veered right across multiple lanes of traffic and t-boned a Mitsubishi Mirage. The user who recorded the incident said that both drivers involved in the collision escaped without serious injuries.
What could cause such a thing to happen?
The original video was posted Thursday, and it already has nearly 750,000 views on TikTok at the moment. Closer inspection showed that the Mach-E’s steering wheel was jiggling as the car dragged along the K-Rail, so it’s not likely that the steering was entirely locked, and the Mach-E’s brake lights do not illuminate throughout the duration of the video until it makes contact with the Mitsubishi Mirage.
It appeared that the Mach-E had a temporary paper license plate in the rear which is issued by the state of California for newly purchased vehicles, and it still had the temporary registration sticker on the windshield so it was likely a recent purchased. Dragging a vehicle against a barrier is a logical way to slow a car down if it’s out of control, but the circumstances in this video were very strange. Carscoops said, “In critical situations like this, drivers can attempt an emergency stop by repeatedly pressing the parking brake button, though it’s unknown whether that was tried.”
Ford told us that it is investigating the incident and California Highway Patrol said in a Facebook post that it determined the vehicle was not operating in an autonomous driving mode, and that the driver was arrested under suspicion of driving under the influence.