It was chaos in Sea Point and Green Point as three separate crashes destroyed 4 cars, 2 shop fronts, 2 bollards and 2 lampposts.
|||Cape Town - It was main road madness in Green Point and Sea Point overnight as three separate collisions destroyed four cars, two shop fronts, two sidewalk bollards and two lampposts.
The first smash happened about 4.40pm on Wednesday on the corner of Beach Road and Marine Drive, when a BMW slammed into a lamppost, bringing it down and blocking traffic at the start of peak hour. No one was injured, said traffic spokesman Richard Coleman.
Then, at 3am on Thursday, in Victoria Road, Green Point, the driver of a red Audi A4 lost control - apparently at high speed - not far from the traffic department offices at Gallows Hill.
Hardly an hour had passed before another motorist lost control and smashed into the rear end of a parked vehicle, sending it into another lamppost.
For the superstitious who believe that bad things happen in threes, the collisions might very well mean there won’t soon be another crash on Victoria Road in the foreseeable future, and the owners of one of the shops damaged in the chaos certainly hope so.
“We couldn’t believe it when we got here,” said Mimi Winkler, who owns The Butcher Man, in Victoria Road.
“The car was standing in front of our shop on the pavement, the music still blaring on its hi-fi system. The driver was gone.
“Our shop hasn’t been open for two months yet and this has got to happen. It is not good for us, that’s for sure.”
The Butcher Man and its immediate neighbour to the right, the restaurant Best of Asia, were extensively damaged.
The car ran up the pavement in front of Giovanni’s coffee shop to the right of the Asian restaurant, but did not touch it. It hit and bent over two bollards on the pavement that were installed to prevent cars from getting on the pavement in the first place, and is believed to have flown through the air before coming to rest against The Butcher Man.
“Witnesses said the driver jumped out of the car, hopped into a taxi and fled,” Winkler said.
“A taxi driver apparently saw the man get into the car at Kennedy’s and drive off at high speed.”
A friend of the owner of the parked car destroyed in the third accident said the noise of the collision woke him.
Timothy Gabb, who lives in a flat next to where the crash happened, said he woke at around 4am to the sound of a crash.
“I looked from the balcony and saw my friend’s car wrapped around a (lamp post),” he said.
“Another car had slammed into the back of it, and had enough momentum after the crash to end up on the other side of the road.
“I’m not sure if anyone got hurt, but all of a sudden there were quite a few people around and a huge commotion. We called the police and went back inside.
“It’s a bummer for my friend, though, because her car was just parked there and now it’s written off.”
Cape Argus