Main St. driver almost experiences West Village streetscape "underground vaults" firsthand

The only thing worse than getting one's car stuck in wet concrete, perhaps, is getting one's car stuck in wet concrete and having the whole experience caught on camera and submitted to the FAIL Blog:

Yes, that's a shiny Beemer that found itself, er, inconvenienced in trying to make a turn onto Fuller St. from Main, it seems.

The comments over at FAIL Blog have been predictably sophomoric, and we'll leave them aside. What we're wondering at BCR, though: was the road blocked or passable at the time?

While the FAIL Blog'gers are sharp-tongued over the presence of construction barrels on the street, streetscape watchers know that Main St. has been re-opened to limited traffic in recent weeks. It's not clear from this photo whether the quicksand-sedan moment happened at a time when Main was detoured, or whether the BMW slipped through at a time when the road was nominally open to traffic.

Either way, just remember: if you drive through wet concrete on the streetscape, your car's likely to get a streetscrape. Har, har.

(H/t to Fullsteam Brewery for alerting us to this one via their Twitter feed.)

Comments

[Natalie]

it happened several weeks ago. Parts of the road were open and it wasn't exactly clear that this part was not.

[GreenLantern]

If Main were open, and there were no traffic cones or barricades onto Fuller Street, the contractor is at fault. From the photo, it's pretty clear to me.

[Joelle]

My picture from that day sadly didn't get as much attention, but it shows the very distinct Road Closed and Cement Truck.

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[Ross Grady]

@Joelle, sure, Fuller was closed (which makes one wonder why the driver was trying to turn onto it) but what about Main at Duke? At one time there were full-width barricades across it, but I don't see them in either picture. (perhaps they were dragged aside so the cement truck could get through . . . ) The status quo lately seems to be that they'll open parts & re-close them at their whim, and it's never entirely clear.

I'm more than willing to get all snarky about Beemer-driving WV residents, as I'm about to complete a 15-month sentence living at WV, but I've also got plenty of snark for the contractor on this project. So far they've cut a gas line, cut a water line at least once (or was it twice?) and I've seen them dig & re-fill some of those holes multiple times. There's a section of Main very close to where the picture was taken where the current road surface is about 18" higher than the gutter only a foot or two away from the gutter.

[Lee L]

I saw that this morning and wondered if it were in Durham.

Joelle, it looks like the driver had installed a sun sheild on the window by the time you took your picture. Not sure if they thought they would be driving the car in a few minutes or not. :)

[GreenLantern]

Well, the sign is there for sure. Maybe she saw it, wasn't aware of the wet concrete (no cones or signs right in front of it), and was just trying to turn around and go back down Main St. She is kind of pulling into the left side of Fuller, so I don't believe she had any intention of going down the street. The contractor should still have done more to keep cars and people off of the wet concrete. A ribbon or some cones would have sufficed.

[Karen]

There was a cement truck parked there and the workers were working on the cement when the car dove in headfirst.

[JPL]

Has Main St. actually been open? I go by there most mornings, and although the barriers only block one lane, the signs definitely still say "ROAD CLOSED".

[Joelle]

By the time that picture was taken they were waiting on a tow truck. And surprisingly the lady drove away after she was pulled out of the concrete. Nobody knows exactly why she turned down Main St. One would think that all of the construction and cones would make one pause before driving that way - especially since Morgan is wide open and goes in the same direction. Who knows what she was thinking...

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