A driver in the Orlando region seems a bit confused about the nature of parking gargaes, according to the latest report from local news station WFTV Channel 9. The driver in question reportedly “tore through” the parking garage of an Orlando apartment complex this past Monday morning, colliding with multiple vehicles and causing thousands of dollars in damage.
Residents of the Lofts at SoDo told local reporters that they heard “a lot of commotion” outside early in the morning, and upon investigating the noise they found broken bumpers, fenders, window panes, and even entire cars pushed together.
Save for the driver’s, all of the vehicles involved in the incident seem to have been parked in the garage and therefore no injuries resulted.
Nevertheless, the cost of the damage is already estimated to be in the thousands.
Resident Charlie Repass told Channel 9 that his car was not damaged, despite being parked in the garage at the time of the incident, but he was shocked at the amount of damage that had occurred.
“It seems like every time someone made a turn they just smashed into car after car after car,” Repass said. “It must have been a drunk driver. I have no idea. It almost looks malicious the way they hit it. They kept going, hit another one, kept going.”
Witnesses say that a male driver was taken into custody at the scene, but local Orlando authorities have not released any additional information as of Tuesday morning due to the holiday weekend.
The recent car accident represents a growing trend in the state of Florida involving negligent driving and abandoned car accidents. Out of the estimated 5.5 million car crashes that occur on U.S. roads each year, data from the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Department shows that there were 344,237 reported accidents in Florida during 2014.
Of those, 192,446 crashes resulted in property damage, and an estimated 80,000 crashes were hit-and-run incidents. The Florida Highway Patrol reported this past February that hit-and-run accidents have been on rise since 2013, resulting in a substantial amount of property damage.
It is still unknown whether the driver was under any kind of impairment, as Repass suggested, but the driver could be charged with a hit-and-run violation.
