This Raleigh police car drove off the top of a retaining wall.

**lesta311** · 03-16-06, 06:16 AM

Steering Defect Leads To N.C. Cruiser Tumble

A Raleigh police car took a tumble down an embankment near an office park Wednesday.

The car went head-first from one office parking lot over a 15-foot ledge down to another office parking area.

The incident happened around 11 a.m. at the former IBM office building at Six Forks Road , about two blocks north of the intersection with Millbrook Road.

According to police, the officer driving the car was pulling out onto Six Forks Road when the steering wheel got stuck turning right. The police report on the incident said that a clipboard in the car slid into the steering wheel, locking it into place.

The report said that the officer tried to stop the car with the brakes, but they did not seem to work.

The car kept spinning around and then went down the drop off and crashed.

The officer, Sharna Yvette Alson, 21, was not injured, police said.

The car suffered $15,000 in damage and a fence the car crash through suffered $1,000 in damage.

**Virginian** · 03-16-06, 08:48 AM

hahaha! Man that sucks big time. And Raleigh has such pretty blue cars, still remember them from growing up there

**Darin** · 03-16-06, 11:41 AM

The article said a steering defect....but then it says a clip board got stuck in the steering wheel. Seems like a human defect.

**Dudleydoright** · 03-16-06, 12:25 PM

Dang! Steering and brakes both went out????????? Think the phantom Dodge caused it?

**Virginian** · 03-16-06, 01:03 PM

The officer, Sharna Yvette Alson, 21, was not injured

Think I found an important factor in the crash

When I was in Driver's Ed in high school back in Raleigh, a girl in my driving group always had to look under the steering wheel to find the brake. Looks like she somehow got into the RPD

Indy · 03-16-06, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by Virginian

Think I found an important factor in the crash

When I was in Driver's Ed in high school back in Raleigh, a girl in my driving group always had to look under the steering wheel to find the brake. Looks like she somehow got into the RPD

When I was first learning to drive, I gave myself a verbal reminder on which was the gas and which was the brake. My parents said they used to be scared shitless when I would do that, since it was apparent I didn't always remember.

**Virginian** · 03-16-06, 01:28 PM

haha a guy in the area here was teaching his daughter to drive, and she got the pedals mixed up and drove into a store front. Happens quite often apparently.

Indy · 03-16-06, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by Virginian

haha a guy in the area here was teaching his daughter to drive, and she got the pedals mixed up and drove into a store front. Happens quite often apparently.

Luckily I never actually got them mixed up. LOL

We've had a few of those mixup accidents around here too. Some teenager several years back drove her car through the front glass window of a movie rental place when she meant to hit the brake and instead hit the gas...

**Prometheus** · 03-16-06, 02:25 PM

I'm sensing a commonality about these drivers.... something about gender, I think.

**TXCharlie** · 03-17-06, 11:59 AM

I have a feeling she may have been holding the clipboard at the time trying to write something and just got fumble-fingered. Hmmm....

Maybe if she left it on top of her computer and it slid into her lap it coulda done that I guess.

**Retdetsgt** · 03-17-06, 02:13 PM

I have some sympathy. When I was young and enthusiastic, I was in "hot pursuit" of some dumbass call and cut across a vacant lot that used to be used car lot. I'd done it several times, but this time there was a chain across the driveway I didn't see. The chain cleared the hood and the roof, but took the overheads off clean as a whistle.....

I had to drive back to the precinct with the overheads in the back seat. "Hey, Sarge, you gonna laugh when you hear what I just did!"

**TXCharlie** · 03-17-06, 03:39 PM

oops - How hard did the Sarge laugh?

**lesta311** · 03-17-06, 05:06 PM

I'm glad no one was hurt. Because if they were, I couldn't laugh about this.

Notice both doors are open and the officer was 21. I wonder if her FTO was with her? Hmmmmmm.........

I'm not pointing any fingers as we had an officer drive into a house a few months back. He was responding with lights and siren to a subject shot and took a turn too fast. The entire front of the patrol car went inside some poor guys bedroom. Thanfully, he wasn't home when it happened.

**TXCharlie** · 03-17-06, 06:08 PM

My brakes went out once in the old '57 (?) Volkswagen I drove in High School - Those things had no backup hydraulics, so when one side blew out you had no brakes at all.

Jumped a high curb at 50 MPH because the vacant field looked like a softer landing than the cars ahead of me. Blew out all 4 tires and bent all 4 rims, but after that I got rid of that hunk of shit.

It didn't even have a heater that worked, or an emergency brake, or a gas gage - It had a reserve switch on the gas tank, but if you flipped it to reserve and forgot to switch it back after filling up, you just flat ran outa gas next time with no reserve.

The windshield washer was powered by the air preassure in my spare tire, so when I went to change a flat once, the spare tire was flat because the hose had a leak in it - Had to hitchhike a ride at night in the Central Louisiana woods. I could hear the dueling banjos playing in the background when the guy in the old pickup stopped to offer me a ride. In retrospect, it woulda been smarter to just drive on the flat tire

**Retdetsgt** · 03-18-06, 12:10 AM

Originally Posted by TXCharlie

oops - How hard did the Sarge laugh?

Uh, no..... He stared at me for about 20 seconds like you would at a 6 year old you were thinking of killing...

Fortunately, I was constantly in shit for something. The guys that never get into trouble end up being made examples when they screw up. The goofballs like me were always doing something stupid so they just wrote us off and stuff like that was considered normal behavior for us!

I used to do shit like tape highway flares together, attach wires and an alarm clock and put it under the Sgt's desk..... But that's another story....

When I retired, a captain who had less tenure than me came up and told me I was one of the last of the real characters to go. People there now look like they came out of the same cookie cutter.