At first we thought a mighty crunch in the morning meant the trash collection truck had dropped a garbage bin from a great height, but the sound of sirens and a myriad flashing lights revealed the true cause in our neighbor’s front yard:
The extent of the damage was more apparent from the road side:
Another one that ain’t gonna buff right out.
The driver was walking around uninjured and the ambulance left quietly.
A day later, the trajectory became apparent:
The right side barely kissed the tree on the right, but the front wheel hooked the utility pole (that’s the new pole in the picture), snapped it off at ground level in addition to the usual break maybe ten feet up, and bounced a piece off the other tree:
I didn’t know you could shatter a cast aluminum alloy wheel, but the missing half of the outer face was lying amid the rather scrambled stone wall along driveway.
We’re reasonably sure we know the cause. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
After the flatbed hauled away the car and everybody left, I harvested a few pounds of interesting debris from the lawn:
It’s tempered glass from the driver-side windows, shattered into small chunks and barely hanging together in those sheets. Laminated windshield glass is entirely different stuff.
The smaller chunks glitter like jewels:
Obviously, the window had a bit of tint.
The smallest chunk, seen from its flat surface, shows the cuboid fragments:
A side view shows more complexity:
Tempering prevents a glass sheet from shattering into long knife-blade shards. Although the edges of the fragments are not keen, we are dealing with broken glass: they are sharp.
How sharp? They make glass knives for slicing eyes and cells.
Broken tempered glass also sheds razor-edged flakes perfectly shaped to penetrate bike tires, although most roadside glass comes from ordinary beverage bottles. The tiniest flakes can make a mess of your eyes, so exercise at least some rudimentary shop safety practices.
Those slabs ought to be good for something, even if they fall apart at the slightest touch …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Did you lose power? If not, why not?
That pole served only one house and, even though the falling wires peeled the service entry / siding / soffits / gutters off, their power stayed on!
The Central Hudson crew snipped the drooping wires atop the pole across the street, dragged the broken pole off the road, and the police let traffic through. They planted and wired the new pole that afternoon, so only one house had a few hours of outage.
In Circuit Cellar INK Oct/Nov 1991 Issue 23, “Steve’s Own Ink” (The Circuit “Storm” Cellar) Steve Ciarcia described the Circuit Cellar heavy duty electricity generation
rig. Do you have similar setup like Steve?
Nope, just a little “quiet” generator to keep the refrigerator & freezer running.
Folks across the street have a Generac that fires up every few days to keep itself happy. I am insane with jealousy, but … maybe for our Next House.
“Feel free to draw your own conclusions.”
“Drugs usage of drivers suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. A study of one week’s samples in 1979 and 1993 in Finland”
— ScienceDirect
April 26th 2002 Marjaniemi, a seaside residential area in eastern Helsinki faced a blackout – a car crashed against an electrical cabinet. And the driver was…lo and behold… author of the research article.
The driver’s blood alcohol content was 2.2 per mille. He had drunk rubbing alcohol.
We’re certain drugs & alcohol were not involved: the driver was walking around taking pictures of the crash site and chatting with folks, rather than being “detained”.
We know the gentle curve just north of the Red Oaks Mill intersection surprises many drivers, who look up just in time to see us on the shoulder …
“the driver was walking around taking pictures …”
“Tekninen toteutus ja taiteellinen vaikutelma (KYS Kaariparkki) Transitions, Performance, Composition and Interpretation (Kuopio University Hospital parking garage)”
A dash cam provides useful and hilarious videos.
I let the rear camera run while I’m in the store: some folks look really baffled while they’re inspecting the bike…