One man pledged to never let a valet touch his car again after he walked out of a restaurant in Atlanta and learned that his Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing had been wrecked. Footage recorded by the car’s on-board Performance Data Recorder shows exactly how the crash happened.
Joe Luck told Atlanta-based news outlet 11 Alive that he watched the valet park his CT5-V right in front of the restaurant he planned to eat at. He figured the 668-horsepower sedan would be waiting for him in the same spot when he walked out, but it was nowhere to be seen. That’s when he found out that a valet got sideswiped just a few blocks away from the restaurant while moving the Cadillac. Luck was skeptical.
He explained that the story didn’t add up for several reasons. First, he’s convinced the valet didn’t need to move his Cadillac because there were plenty of open spots in the parking lot. Second, the car was far more damaged than if it had been merely sideswiped: the airbags had deployed, the driver-side quarter panel and rear door were badly damaged, and the news report claims that the rear axles fell off the car.
Embedded above, the Performance Data Recorder’s footage shows the car driving down the road for about a tenth of a mile before veering to the right to make a U-turn across a double-yellow line. It’s during this maneuver that a Dodge Challenger slams into the Blackwing. While this wasn’t a high-speed crash, it caused one hell of an impact — check out the G-force meter on the bottom-left side of the screen. We don’t know whether either driver sustained injuries, though we clearly see a Ram-based ambulance idling with its lights on in the background.
Valet company National Parking issued a statement to clarify that it has fired the person who was driving the Cadillac when it got hit. There’s no word yet on whether Luck’s Blackwing will be fixed or replaced, who is going to pay in either scenario, or how long the process will take.
“I know I’ll never valet a vehicle ever again. I’ll figure out something, even if I have to pay extra to park my own vehicle. I won’t trust them with the keys to my car ever again,” Luck told 11 Alive. “I’m going to be stuck with this vehicle that’s had a major accident when I had nothing to do with the accident,” he added. He’s not wrong: accidents — especially big ones — often appear on vehicle history reports, like Carfax.
If you’re a valet, keep in mind that cameras (including some that face the driver) are becoming increasingly common in new cars.
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