Low Flying Pelican+Dropped Cellphone+Distracted Texan = $1.5M Bugatti Veyron drowned in 2ft of water

November 12, 2009 at 9:14 pm


Image Courtesy: Chris Paschenko @ The Daily News: Wrecker driver Gilbert Harrison, with MCH Towing, pulls a Bugatti Veyron, one of the world’s fastest production cars, from the water by the north frontage road of Interstate 45 near Omega Bay on Wednesday afternoon.

How do you drop ~$2m worth in a pond of water in a jiffy?  This is how they do it (at least one man did it successfully) in Texas.  Read along this twisted version of a Pelican Brief style thriller ( though no murder of human beings involved, it involves a very expensive &  rare automobile)..

A man blamed a low-flying pelican and a dropped cell phone for his veering his million-dollar sports car off a road and into a salt marsh near Galveston. The accident happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on the frontage road of Interstate 45 northbound in La Marque, about 35 miles southeast of Houston.

The Lufkin, Texas, man told of driving his luxury, French-built Bugatti Veyron when the bird distracted him, said La Marque police Lt. Greg Gilchrist. The motorist dropped his cell phone, reached to pick it up and veered off the road and into the salt marsh. The car was half-submerged in the brine about 20 feet from the road when police arrived.

The story reported by Chris Paschenko @ The Galveston County Daily News has some interesting details. The man was uninjured after escaping the partially submerged Bugatti Veyron as it came to rest in about 2 feet of saltwater. The man, who refused to give his name, was looking at real estate in Galveston.

About 3 p.m. a low-flying pelican distracted him as he traveled north on Interstate 45 just south of the hurricane levee near Omega Bay. The man jerked the wheel, dropped his cell phone, and the car’s front tire left the frontage road and entered a muddy patch, which foiled his attempt to maneuver away from the lagoon. Chris’ report says Veyron’s powerful engine gurgled like an outboard motor for about 15 minutes before it died.

Web sources say Bugatti Veyron is one of 200 made and only one of about 15 in the United States. New models of the car – if you can get one – sell for about $2 million. It is too painful to watch this French beauty (though HQ-ed in Château St. Jean in Molsheim (Alsace, France), it is owned by the German car-manufacturer Volkswagen) towed out of the water like a dead wildebeest.
For those rich folks in big ol’ Texas, this is why y’all need to hang up and drive.  Quit playing around with cell phone and watching pelicans when you operate such fine machinery (or find a better excuse than a flying Pelican if you happen to dunk it in a pond).  Sec. LaHood should invite this gent to deliver the keynote speech at his next Distracted Driving Summit..

(Soureces: AP Via Google; The Galveston County Daily News; The Inquisitr)

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