AUBURN, Maine — An 83-year-old woman says she was parking her 2010 Honda Civic Tuesday when it leaped over a cement wheel stop and crashed into an Auburn laundry.
“I was going very slow,” said Lucienne Samson of Lewiston. “I was going to stop. I took my foot off the accelerator and I put my foot on the break and it went like 50 miles an hour. Zoom!”
At about 2:45 p.m, the car smashed through the front of the Auburndale Cleaning Center II in the Taylor Brook Mall Shopping Center. The vehicle stopped when it became wedged beside a row of washing machines.
No one was hurt.
Missy Guay was standing nearby when the accident happened.
“She seemed to be slowing down and all of a sudden there was a squeal of tires,” Guay said.
People in nearby shops heard the impact.
“I heard this boom,” said Mike Flurry, whose wife operates New To You Consignments next door. “I knew immediately that’s what happened.”
Inside the laundry, worker Linda Wilson, who was rolling a basket of sheets up an aisle when the car appeared.
“It was pretty scary,” she said. “I was probably about five feet from her.”
Real estate developer Kevin Fletcher, who owns the building, estimated the damage at more than $10,000. He said he would have to examine the building, looking for signs of structural damage, before he would have a better repair estimate.
Minutes after the crash, Samson insisted that she was unhurt and unshaken.
“I did not press that accelerator to the floor,” she said. “I would have had to press that accelerator to the floor to go like that ”
The Sun Journal examined the last 10 years of Samson’s driving record and she has had no violations.
“I don’t get into accidents,” she said. “I couldn’t stop it. There was nothing I could do.”
They really need to stop switching the brake and gas pedals in the middle of the night on old people’s cars.
They really need to start charging people who cannot control their vehicles. Can’t figure out which pedal is which? Stop driving. The rest of us would like to live.
Lighten up, Waldo — ya won’t be doing all that honking if YOU live to be 63 or 73 or 83… LOL
If i make it to 73 I won’t have to worry because most vehicles will simply do the driving for you by then or have such advanced technology that smacking the gas instead of the brake won’t be allowed to happen.
So what happened?
83 pretty much says it all, Lucy. “Can’t see so good anymore, legs are getting pretty stiff, too, and my hearing is shot — thank goodness I still have my drivers license!”
Software glitch.
once again old people need drivers testing like younger people!
From the article: “I don’t get into accidents,” she said. “I couldn’t stop it. There was nothing I could do.”
Well you just did get into one and there is a lot you could have done. You didn’t have to floor the gas pedal and I don’t care how many times she says she didn’t press the gas. She is 100% lying, she just doesn’t know she is.
I hope the state takes away her right to drive. She might kill someone next time.
How can you lie and not know it? Wouldn’t that be misinformed? Calling her a lair seems a little harsh to me. I think she needs to retake the road test before she is allowed to drive again.
But Kevin didn’t call her a “lair,” captin. I think he’s just wondering why she doesn’t take the lion’s share of the blame. Guess her “mane” intent was just to get the laundry done.
The car should have an ecu that records engine sensors, throttle being one. Wonder if it’ll be looked at.
Same story different name. I wish I had kept a running total
of these incidents from the PPH/BDN for the year. It is a LOT!
“I took my foot off the accelerator and I put my foot on the break ..”
*BRAKE