Crashes in Lafayette and Orinda made getting around Lamorinda a bit more difficult than usual Tuesday, with power poles getting the short end of things in separate collisions.
A crash on Reliez Station at Richelle Court in Lafayette brought neighbors and police on the run mid afternoon, Tuesday. Luckily, traffic was quickly restored despite heavy damage to the pole by an errant driver.
Orinda police hope to have Moraga Way reopened by 8:30 p.m. (Ed. It turned out to be more like 7 a.m. Wednesday) after a crash took down a power pole at Brookside at 4:38 p.m. Luckily, no injuries were reported, although hundreds of homes were without power for as long as 12 hours.
Police said the driver told them they were using the vehicle’s cruise control when, for some reason, the car lurched to the right and hit the pole. The initial investigation found no evidence of alcohol or medical condition or drowsiness on the part of the operator.
Wait what? How?
Holy Moly! someone is going to have some splaining to do!!!!
Didnt we just have one of these??
@Tricia – You mean THIS ONE?
The Audi A7 has adaptive cruise control. Assuming it was in use, shame on the driver. Per the manual for this car:
“For safety reasons, do not use the ACC when driving on roads with many curves, when the road surface is in poor condition and/or in bad weather (such as ice, fog, gravel, rain). Using the system under these conditions increases the risk of accident.”
and,
“Switch off ACC temporarily when driving in turning lanes, on expressway exits or in construction zones. This prevents the vehicle form accelerating to the stored speed when in these situations.”
and,
“The ACC system and braking guard do not react to people, animals, objects crossing the road or oncoming objects. The function of the radar sensors can be affected by reflective objects such as guard rails, the entrance to a tunnel, heavy rain, or ice.”
And, if only using old fashioned Cruise Control, the cardinal rule has always been “open highway without traffic only”.
I hate all of these comfort & convenience features in new cars, that take peoples’ interaction with their vehicles out of first position. It’s amazing these things don’t happen more often.
Grrrrrrrr.
Here we go again.
“The computer did it” is the modern version of “The dog ate it.” Gimme a break. Cruise control (even ACC) on Moraga Way in the rain/wet and not paying attention? Dumb. I also suspect this event is what caused an extended Comcast outage last night. I had to resort to backup Internet via cellular to get my Netflix fix. Grrrr.
Cruise control. Yeh right.
Cruise control caused the car to lurch to the right? Check the cell phone records….
Stupid driver. Period.
you don’t use cruise control on Moraga way, whether it’s adaptive type or the regular type. Stupid driver!
PS: they were very lucky they weren’t killed! A recent report of a Tesla owner who reclined and was napping while he had his adaptive cruise control.was.killed when the car drove under a flatbed truck. ( which the adaptive cruise control did not see )
Cruise control? You’re joking right?
@Denny – We never joke around here, right folks? Folks? But not about this stuff.