Skip to main content

Parking problems

An Italian woman ended up parking her car on the roof of a house when she accidentally forgot to use its handbrake. The woman had stopped to photograph a scenic view but as she stood to one side and adjusted the settings on her camera, the car rolled from the road, through a barrier, down a hillside and onto a house below.
March 21, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
An Italian woman ended up parking her car on the roof of a house when she accidentally forgot to use its handbrake. The woman had stopped to photograph a scenic view but as she stood to one side and adjusted the settings on her camera, the car rolled from the road, through a barrier, down a hillside and onto a house below. The car smashed through the roof and landed in the bathroom, its progress halted by an iron bath. Luckily no-one was hurt as the occupants of the house were not at home at the time of the incident. Meanwhile in China, two people were lucky to escape serious injury when a driver accidentally reversed their car through the wall of a multi-storey car park. The vehicle was left hanging over a 15m drop and its occupants had to crawl out very carefully indeed. The driver had apparently pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. And in Croatia, the proud owner of a Ferrari F360 watched in horror as a Renault truck suffered a brake failure while parking beside a busy port. The truck rammed into the Ferrari convertible, shoving it into the harbour where the high performance car proved itself unseaworthy and quickly sank. The Ferrari owner had been sitting eating a meal in a restaurant just a few metres away from his precious car as the incident unfolded. It is not clear if he suffered indigestion following the accident.

Related Content

  • In Control
    April 23, 2013
    A disabled French driver had a terrifying experience when the accelerator pedal on his specially- adapted vehicle failed. The man was making a trip to the supermarket when the accelerator jammed at a speed of 100km/h. But when he tried to brake, the car accelerated instead of slowing down. The driver used his cellphone to call the emergency services and several police cars came rushing to his assistance. The police cars escorted him as he roared along a major highway in Northern France, with t
  • Douglas Parkes: tunnelling pioneer obituary
    June 30, 2025
    Douglas Parkes, a pioneer of modern tunnelling technology, died recently.
  • Break into machine guidance without breaking the bank
    January 10, 2024

    Watch the video

    You don’t get the name “The Dirt Ninja” without a serious obsession with all things heavy equipment and the technologies empowering what’s next for civil construction. For over a decade, Tom Gardocki, co-owner of New Era Excavation, has commanded hundreds of thousands of views on his YouTube channel—with a description that reads, "Anyone can run equipment, very few can operate.” Well said.

  • Crane collapse on US bridge project
    July 20, 2016
    A crane collapsed over the Tappan Zee Bridge in the US on July 19th. Construction work is being carried out on the bridge. The structure is located in Tarrytown, New York State and the bridge is around 40km north of central Manhattan, spanning the Hudson River at one of its widest points. The crane was being used for the construction work and collapsed right across the roadway and in front of vehicles using the crossing. A number of vehicles were damaged in the incident and local news reports suggest up to