ETC

Teen on the hook for $10,000 after driving into wet concrete

A young driver in Nebraska is looking at a steep fine after burying his Civic up to the axles because he apparently mistook a stretch of freshly poured concrete for an active turn lane.

According to the Lincoln Journal Star, a stretch of Old Cheney Road was reduced to one lane each way thanks to an ongoing pavement repair project. As you might imagine, this caused numerous backups and delays as traffic on the busy road funneled into a single lane while workers replaced the old, torn-up surface with fresh concrete.

Enter a young man named Shadrach Yasiah. Yasiah, who clearly has the raddest name in all of Nebraska, was cruising along Old Cheney in his eighth-gen Honda Civic when he came to a line of cars stacked up at a red light in the construction zone. Luckily for him, or so he thought, there was a 24-foot gap in the traffic cones on his left side, and the turn lane was wide open. Unfortunately the turn lane was empty because it was brand-new, still-wet concrete, and when he pulled through the gap his Civic immediately sank.

"It was probably less than 30 minutes old when they went into," Thomas Shafer of the Lincoln Public Works Department told the Star Journal. "It was really not set up for a vehicle, and it sunk up to the axles."

It took more than two hours to get Yasiah's Civic out of the quagmire, which made traffic even worse. Although Lincoln police didn't charge Yasiah, citing the gap in the cones and the fact that it wasn't obvious the concrete was wet, either he or his insurance company may be responsible for the repairs. Shafer estimated that the cost to fix the ruined concrete could run to $10,000.

"This will be a bill that we will present to the driver, and I assume they will talk to their insurance company," he said.

Related Video:

Share This Photo X