Car wash badly damaged in accident
An accident in a German car wash has caused extensive damage last week. A car owner lost control over his vehicle and drove high-speed through the tunnel. The damage is in the six-figure range.
A car wash customer made a serious driving error in Alpha Wasch in Wiesbaden last week. The car wash next to a wholesale supermarket offers an intensive pre-wash with manual cleaning and high-pressure pre-wash.
When the manual pre-wash was completed by an employee, an accident occurred. The customer’s vehicle accelerated and drove through the entire car wash without braking. Only a parking barrier behind the car wash was able to stop the vehicle. “Fortunately, it hit this barrier, because otherwise there might have been fatalities. Although there is a side road here, vehicles often drive along it,” explains Managing Director Bernhard Haag in an interview with CarwashPro.de.
A lot of damage
“Our car wash was running quite well today, so the system was on standby when the accident happened. The brushes were in the middle and the roof rollers were down.” Without the systems being on standby, some brushes would have been in a break position at the side and may not have been caught by the customer’s vehicle. “Not even the high-speed roller shutter could move up fast enough, that’s how fast the car drove through the plant.”
Despite the drag chain, the journey through the car wash was not distracted, as the driver drove straight through the system. “This was probably due to the off-road vehicle not really noticing the rollers of the chain,” suspects Haag. The manager, who was not on site at the time of the accident, was unable to detect any attempts to brake.
Following the damage, the car wash is no longer operational and is now a case for the insurance company. “Our Schleicher system was relatively new and in good condition,” Haag points out in light of the damage.
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