High-Impact Driving

We spotted this near our usual parking spot during a recent grocery trip:

The bush was pretty well uprooted, suggesting the vehicle stopped atop the bush after demolishing the wall.

Wondering how it got there, I looked across the parking lot:

Yes, that’s a dead lamp post. The impact dislodged its concrete base by about four inches:

The greenery came from another eviscerated bush:

I expected to see tire gouges in the grass, but … nope.

The bush got a haircut, although the right half seems undamaged:

The boulder won its disagreement with the vehicle, although there’s surprisingly little shattered plastic and other debris along the trail:

The impact dislodged the boulder, which came to rest about four feet from its origin:

The damage lies along a straight line from the middle of the Adams entrance intersection to the wall impact:

There are no obvious skid marks, undercarriage scrapes, or gouges in the grass anywhere along the trajectory, suggesting the vehicle remained mostly airborne and ballistic during the whole event, and even the three (!) curbs involved have no marks.

The nice lady at the Adams Customer Service counter didn’t know what happened and, as usual, the Poughkeepsie Journal (newspaper) has nothing to say.

I did not check for a high-clearance pickup truck with tall tires and severe front-end damage in the body shop across the street, although one seems a likely suspect. Whatever the vehicle may have been, it was definitely traveling at the usual (tautological) “high rate of speed” …