I Always Thought That To "Car Pool" Was To Share A Car And Cut Down Expenses,

but it appears not to mean that for this driver,

the unnamed lady drove her car out through a barrier, down a 15-foot embankment, and into an unoccupied swimming pool - but escaped injury, the woman, whose name has not been released, crashed her BMW nose-first into a pool side sun deck at Garden Fitness in Monterey, northern California,

'She was in her BMW, getting ready to leave, and near as we can figure out, she had the car in drive and accidentally hit the accelerator,' said Monterey Fire Captain Paul Goodwin, 'She went through the fence, landed on the side of the pool and flipped upside down, She was able to self-extricate from the car, and seemed to be all right, but we sent her to the hospital to get checked out.'

whilst the above is mildly amusing bad driving like this is not just confine to members of the public, in the UK police are responsible for more than nine road smashes every day, and shockingly many of these accidents are caused by basic driving errors, like failing to stop at junctions, doing U-turns without looking, taking bends too quickly and failing to use mirrors when reversing, in one incident a PCSO’s legs were trapped under a wheel when an officer in Cambridgeshire drove off before the PCSO had got into the patrol car,

or a police driver in North Yorkshire caused a smash after overtaking a car on a dual carriageway as two lanes merged, and one officer in Dorset forgot to put the handbrake on his car and it rolled back into a wall, more worryingly it could be worse, ten of Britain’s 52 police forces did not supply details while others refused to reveal how many crashes they had admitted liability for,

score so far?

more than 150 people have died in police-related car accidents since 2004, including 79 during chases,

officers admitted causing 3,357 crashes last year – an average of more than 64 a week,

at least 2,492 of the victims were driving another vehicle – 56 were motorcyclists or cyclists and at least 22 pedestrians – with 126 needing hospital treatment,

one question I could not find the answer for, how many officers in these crashes were taken to court for careless/dangerous driving?

so dropping your car into a pool to be cleaned does not seem quite so bad now!