Reddit Is Concerned About This Aldi Parking Lot Accident
Car accidents are attention magnets. Driving by, we can't help but stare at the wreckage. However, we do not always show the same concern that some Redditors expressed on the Aldi subreddit. That is because the pictured crash consisted of a pickup truck caving in the outer wall of an Aldi.
"Bad day at Aldi in Des Moines!" read the title of the post. In the pictures, you can see the pickup truck next to the sign advertising Aldi's curbside service, which hangs above Aldi's dented brick façade. Subsequent photos highlight the mess of foods strewn about on the inside. "Well," one commenter pointed out, "it is a curbside pick up." Most, however, reacted to the fact someone could have been hurt. "Yikes!!! That's pretty scary. I'm so glad no one was hurt."
How this happened is unclear. A few speculated that the driver accidentally put their vehicle into drive instead of reverse. But, according to the post's OP, "The driver was in the store on the phone to someone." So, who knows?
This happens more than you would expect
The picture shared on Reddit is indeed dramatic. However, such crashes happen more often than you might imagine. Talking to the Miami Herald, Mark Wright, co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council, explains that these crashes happen up to sixty times each day. True, when you consider Statista's fact that in 2019 there were 229 million drivers in the United States, the number becomes an extraordinarily low percentage. However, that is still two tonnes of metal smashing into the side of a building.
What's worse, Wright continued, was there was no one easy explanation for why these crashes happen. In other words, it's not as simple as drivers being distracted by their cell phones (though phones and drunk driving are factors).
The only solution, lohud.com reports, is for building codes to change in order to accommodate the fact that acts of God may happen. In fact, one comment for the Aldi crash noted this happening in their own lives: "This thing kept happening to post offices around here a few years ago and they installed concrete posts to keep people from hitting the buildings." The alternative may be changing everything into a drive-thru.