Skip to main content

Eyes on the road

A US driver has lodged a contender for the world's most feeble excuse for an accident following an incident near to his home in Oklahoma. The 68-year-old was on his way home from church when he drove his pick-up truck into a 2tonne elephant, and then claimed that he had not initially seen it.
February 22, 2012 Read time: 1 min
A US driver has lodged a contender for the world's most feeble excuse for an accident following an incident near to his home in Oklahoma. The 68-year-old was on his way home from church when he drove his pick-up truck into a 2tonne elephant, and then claimed that he had not initially seen it. The 2.44m high elephant had escaped from a nearby circus and suffered a broken tusk and an injured leg in the incident, although the accident could have been much worse had the driver not seen the fugitive animal at the last moment and swerved to avoid a head-on impact. The animal was attended to by a vet but was not seriously hurt. The driver's ego has been somewhat dented however.

Related Content

  • Parking problem
    February 27, 2012
    An Australian couple caused something of a parking problem with their vehicle in a quiet residential Sydney side-street. The issue was that their vehicle should have been in the air rather than on the ground, as it was a single engine Piper aircraft.
  • Geosynthetic drainage technology developments
    June 13, 2012
    An innovative solution to providing vital, low-impact surface water control for one of Britain’s largest local authority road schemes is said to have been recently achieved using Hydro International’s (HI) Hydro Vortex Drop Shaft  ow control technology. The new 7km bypass built by Costain at Church Village, near Pontypridd, South Wales, required careful planning to minimise its effect on the countryside and the local environment. Rhondda Cynon Taff Council needed to bypass Church Village to reduce traf c
  • Responsive roadsign developed by student
    August 22, 2013
    A UK student hopes his new lenticular road signs which ‘pulse’ at drivers will lead to a revolution in the way motorists are given information on the roads. Meanwhile, a leading road marking firm is helping keep tourists safe in a spiritually significant town in Umbria, Italy. Guy Woodford reports You may think Charles Gale’s vision of creating the first ‘pulsing’ lenticular road sign was the result of months, even years, spent studying traffic and driver behaviour on the roads of his adopted student c
  • Fast criminal
    May 10, 2016
    Two thieves in the UK robbed a property, taking the keys to the owner’s Porsche sportscar and then driving off with it as well as a TV, a wallet and other assorted items. The driver called his friends on the phone as he drove away, boasting about having stolen the high-performance car, revving the engine for emphasis. The driver quickly found out however that having consumed alcohol, he was not in full control of a vehicle that was also rather more powerful than any he had driven before.