New York Woman Ran Over By Driverless Corvette

Earlier this afternoon, around one o’clock or so, a rather uncommon accident took place in Midtown New York City. Outside of a popular restaurant, Chop’t, a long line of people stood patiently waiting for their afternoon meal. Across the street, a yellow C5 convertible was brought out of a parking garage.

Without warning, the car suddenly sped across the street– towards the crowd of hungry people– and struck a woman in line, trapping her underneath it. While unfortunate, no doubt, what makes this scene a bit peculiar is the fact that there was no driver in the car.

According to the article on New York Post, parking garage attendants brought out the Corvette, handed off the keys to the owner, and then the car began to careen towards the line outside of Chop’t. The automatic starter system the owner apparently had equipped was to blame for the driverless mishap.

Most gearheads are already aware of the result when the starter is activated while a vehicle is in gear, and now this ‘Vette owner definitely does, too. New York Post reports that the driver (naturally) pushed blame on the attendant, and the attendant just doesn’t seem to know what happened– only that the car started moving after the owner got his keys.

We got a hold of one of the managers at the Chop’t restaurant who was present at the time, and she was kind enough to share what she knew. She told us that when it happened, everyone was taken off guard; people were alarmed and emotions were everywhere. The car traveled right up to the restaurant door, where it struck the unfortunate woman, but luckily didn’t harm anyone else or even make contact with the Chop’t building.

She also shared with us that the driver was freaked out about his car taking off (can’t really blame him), and that he stood by after the incident versus leaving first chance he got. She wasn’t able to tell what condition the woman hit was in, but the New York Post states that she was taken to the hospital.

There’s also no word as to what damage was done to the car, but we assume that it wasn’t able to pick up enough speed to cause anything too considerable. But one way or another, let this be a warning to those with automatic starter systems: parking brakes and neutral are your best friends.