Earlier this week, a family in Southlake, Texas woke to find than an SUV had crashed into their pickup truck, which was parked in the driveway. The truck was propelled into the garage, causing severe damage to the property.
While the driver at fault, 35-year old Toni Aoun, initially ran off, Southlake Police reportedly caught up with him about an hour later and charged him with duty on striking a structure of $200, which is a Class B misdemeanor.
“[It was] a huge boom that was followed by our home alarm screaming,” stated homeowner Natalie Woods Stanyer. “We were shaken. It was a scary experience. Our daughters sleep in the front of the house.”
The weirdest part about this story isn’t this incident in particular, but the fact that there have been five in total, with the latest in 2014, when a car flipped over while charging down the driveway, landing just a few feet away from the home, reports WFAA.
Other crashes involved the mailbox or trees on the property, while the most recent was also the most damaging one.
What on Earth is happening?
Here’s the issue. The driveway sort of forms a “T” in the road, right where two separate streets intersect. And since it also lines up perfectly with the road, some drivers are tricked into simply going forward, landing directly onto the property.
“We’ve put in the rumble strips, it’s 30 miles per hour. We put in a stop sign, and we put up a street light,” stated Southlake Mayor Laura Hill. “You really have to look at, is there something we could be doing better or smarter?”, she added.
Since the family’s safety is clearly at stake, the city will look into what can be done in order to avoid these types of incidents from happening. Since they tend to occur at night, adding more street lights to the surrounding area perhaps would be a good place to start.
