It’s not often we here at The Autopian write about car crashes, but when we do, it’s because the wreck involves something absolutely ridiculous we have never seen before. That’s exactly the case with this alleged drunk driver crash, which shows an ejected driver being saved by a swimming pool that happened to be in the exact spot they were ejected from the car.
The incident, which was caught on video, shows the driver being ejected from their vehicle after a violent rollover into the backyard of a Clark County, Nevada home. By some miracle, instead of going headfirst into the pavement, they landed in the water.
“Lucky” doesn’t even begin to describe this series of events.
This Person Is Fortunate To Be Alive
Fox 5 Las Vegas says the crash happened the night of December 15. It resulted in the vehicle, a third-generation Chevrolet Equinox, smashing through a property wall and landing on a poolhouse roof, before ripping down a patio.
Homeowner Cletis Reed heard the crash and came outside to find his backyard destroyed and the driver floating in his pool.
“It sounded like a freight train. I figured something happened in the street and I come out to see my entire backyard destroyed,” Reed said. “I mean everything was just blown up. The patio is on the ground, the lady is floating in my pool.”
Video from Reed’s surveillance camera, published to YouTube by Local 12 in Nevada, captured the moment the Chevy came careening into the yard. If you watch closely, you can actually see the driver being ejected and landing in the pool.
A crash report obtained by Fox 5 Vegas says the driver was speeding moments before the crash and “failed to stop” before hitting a “block wall,” which launched them into the air. If that isn’t wild enough, the driver was able to stand up and converse with the cops minutes after her dip into the waist-deep shallow end.
Reed said the driver was conscious when he pulled her from the water.
“She kept floating face up, she flipped over face down, she snuck under water. She was conscious, but she was moaning and groaning. We get her out, God’s witness, she stands up 15 minutes later getting interviewed by police,” Reed said.
The car landed in such a position that a tow truck had to use a crane to remove it from the property.
From being ejected from a flying car to being able to stand and talk within the time it takes to watch an episode of The Simpsons is pretty damn good. I can’t even begin to imagine the odds of this actually happening. No one else was involved in the crash, though Reed told Fox he nearly got into the jacuzzi before making a last-minute detour—something he says saved his life.
Reed said he was moments away from getting into his hot tub, which was located next to the wall that was destroyed in the crash.
“I popped the cover on and I was like, you know, I gotta tell my wife something. And by the grace of God I’m here and the patio goes bam. I would have been dead,” Reed said. “It would have killed me.”
Following the crash, the driver was taken to a hospital in Arizona. They have not yet been charged with a crime, though Fox 5 Vegas says the person “has previous traffic violations.”
Someone’s Gonna Have To Pay For This
For the driver’s sake, I hope they have insurance, because this damage won’t be cheap to fix. In addition to the poolhouse (which needs its roof repaired), the wall, (which needs to be rebuilt), and the patio (which needs to be replaced), there’s also the issue of the pool itself.
The water is, according to Reed, contaminated with motor oil, which means all 25,000 gallons will have to be drained so the pool and its systems can be properly cleaned. All in, Reed told Fox he estimates repairs for all of the damage will cost about $300,000. Yikes.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this incident, the biggest being to always wear your seatbelt. Because should you be thrown from your car – no matter the reason – there will very likely not be a swimming pool there to catch you.
Top graphic image: Fox Local 12
Ironically saved by the ubiquitous concrete block wall that signifies that you’re either somewhere in the third world or just the American Southwest 🙂
I get it, I get it — privacy, security, noise abatement — it still looks weird when multimillion dollar homes have cinder blocks stacked around the yard, all the way up to the sidewalk. It’s just not something you see in most places. On the plus side, at least they break away (somewhat) and are more forgiving then some of the stone and brick mailboxes I’ve seen people hit. Those things should be illegal, IMO.
heeeey kool aid!
I would have also accepted “YOU BOYS BORED?! Snap into a Slim Jim!” 🙂
<shutter sunglasses intensifies> OOOhhh YEEaAAAHHH!
‘Rampaging’ Roy Slaven and H.G Nelson need to commentate on this accident.
Beware the Ides of December…
Jeanine Pirro, that you?
No Floozies in the Jacuzzi !
Of all the pools in all the towns in all the world, she drops into mine.
Round up the usual suspects.
I got sidetracked with the Rolls Royce video and noticed it’s the oceanfront community swimming pool in Plymouth, England. I studied there in ’99 and we spent almost every day up on the grassy knoll (the Hoe, as locals call it, but not like the hooker. More like “Who” which is perfect for the Keith Moon reference).
Small world. And in case you ever wondered if England had sunshine, I think it rained three times the entire month I was there. To be fair, it was July…
My family spent a week around Ireland in late October and only saw rain one day 20+ years ago. Wind, yes. Fog, yes. But overall, no worse than it would have been in Seattle at that time of the year.
Never has she partied so hardy!
Same time next year?
Yeah. I meant to do that.
Blessed?….sigh.
And just a week before the Solstice
I thought only rock stars drove cars into pools.
She was keeping up with the Joneses.
Or Jeremy Clarkson
And Curtis Turner
The sign did say carpool lane.
Awesome! COTD candidate!
She’s even luckier than you mentioned: all this could have happened but the homeowners could have been out to dinner. She would have had her life saved by the perfectly-placed pool, only to end up drowning in it.
Also…$300k?! What am I missing? But yeah I hope he gets every penny he can.
You’re missing the cost of home repairs and maintenance in 2025/26. Astronomical. Materials are through the roof due to tariffs, and labor is even worse since all of the labor is being hunted down according to melanin content.
+1, can confirm as one who is unlucky enough to be building a house whose contract was signed nine months before the idiot at 1600 PA ave was inaugurated. His idiocy has cost me the best part of $100K in cost overruns due to the massive labor shortage and tariffs.
The weird thing is in preparation for the tariffs the U.S. distributors imported an incredible amount of lumber so wholesale prices have been really low – like below cost. I guess this didn’t get passed onto your builder. That said pressure treated lumber is still capacity constrained and expensive. And while margins on engineered lumber are getting squeezed, in general prices have remained high. There are a bunch of new OSB plants getting built, and it looks like by 2027 there should be overcapacity which should bring down prices. Good luck getting your new house built – it is always a stressful time.
There is literally no lumber in my new house at all other than millwork and some shims around the windows and doors – and all the exterior trim is PVC board (the price of which is also through the roof because guess where most of it comes from). Steel SIPs construction, with all steel stud interior walls. Remember the steel tariffs? I sure do. And here in SW FL a HUGE number of trades people have vanished or been deported, so that’s been fun too, given we still have a building boom going on down here.
I dont like orange man but I dont blame him for the labor shortage. That was something setup 30 years ago with education pushing college above technical labor.
Reality is there are only so many people who want or are even capable of doing hard physical labor in a hot climate (or any climate). You literally could not pay me enough to do roofing in Florida. I roofed a shed myself in Maine and it nearly killed me. With few exceptions, the only white people who will do that sort of work are those who literally can’t do anything else. My kid brother had a fencing business in Maine and would have KILLED for some of the hard working immigrants who build houses in Florida. All he could get with rare exceptions even paying decent money for unskilled labor were drunks and tweakers who were completely unreliable.
But even with that, the right thing to do is to have a long-term plan to train the people willing to do it, not round up and get rid of the people who ARE currently doing it because they are brown. And let’s face it, that was the full reality of the situation. And have a reasonable method for immigrating legally, not the horror show we have had for decades. But racism runs deep here (see Trump’s Golden Ticket bullshit – rich and white? Come on it!), and immigrants make about as good a scapegoat for the ills of the working class as the Jews did in 1930s Germany. I have no doubt there are some in the MAGA world who would LOVE a “final solution” for it.
I think that take borders on “complimentary racism” but there’s absolutely some truth to it — more cultural than ethnic, though.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, there were still entire construction crews made up of 100% local people. A solid chunk of my high school peers spend summers doing framing and roofing work. It was hard, but for younger people, once you got into a routine it was very manageable. I think the issue (to your point, and Scott’s) is that our culture suddenly decided that work wasn’t important and we could just outsource it to non-local people, and everything was in a pretty good economic balance for quite a while until the labor disruptions started in the late 2010s or so.
The biggest issue with so many of Trump’s policies is that he acts like our entire economy (and labor force) can just turn on a dime and suddenly go back to the knowledge, work ethic, or tolerance for personal injury that we shed many years ago. It’s not going to pan out the way he thinks. And on a personal, human level, it’s absolutely appalling.
Yes that is the point I was trying to make. Education in my area around the late 90s and early 2000s. Consoler’s made people going to the vo-tech look bad. They were beneath you, college was the only right decision in the consoler’s eyes. Boy were they wrong. Ill never forget one student she talked down to for four years, went and got a welding certificate. Within two years he was making the same amount as her.
If she had gotten a college degree she could be making multiples of as much and not have to take a shower after work or run the risk of serious injury every day. Those jobs have to pay well because they really rather suck. <shrug>.
My high school guidance counselor told me I would never amount to much with my “attitude”. I probably make 4X what he would today, but I wouldn’t with out my degrees. Not that I work in either field I have degrees in, but that really doesn’t matter much.
It is wildly dependent on where you live. In Maine, construction crews are still mostly white folk – though as I mentioned, the quality of them is a *serious* issue. In the South, not-so-much. I suspect that has been the case for many decades, just the color of their skin has changed a bit. People think there is lots of money to be made in the “skilled trades”, but there really isn’t. The guy with his name on the truck makes bank, all the peons working under him really don’t. But it’s a living if it’s all you can do and you are willing and able to do it.
Every single person in my graduating class (1987) at my wealthy suburban high school went to college (at least initially). That is the norm for that school still today – friend’s kids attend that school today. The rate is much lower for less wealthy towns, of course. But even if you want to be in “the trades” more education is better than less education.
I think ultimately, it’s as much that the demographics of the country have and are changing as much as anything. Back in the “good old days” there were only half as many people to start with – and it isn’t white folk driving that growth. There aren’t as many white people in the demographic that has to work this sort of job, and a lot more brown people. But as I have told my brother many times – I went to school all those years so I DON’T have to sweat my balls off to make a living. At least most of the time, some datacenters can be surprisingly toasty, and racking and cabling can be hard sweaty work too. But at least it’s only occasionally, and not day in and day out for an entire career. After 20 years of landscaping and then fencing work, my kid brother makes an OK living, but his body is basically ruined, and he’s only 50. No thanks.
But it does suck that the sort of mindless, but not terribly hard, factory work that sucked up massive quantities of the uneducated for OK pay is long gone, and it’s never, ever coming back. Another thing to blame on the billionaire class (even if they were only hundred millionaires back then).
I’ve told this story before, but I did a career day at my rural high school and got paired with a local farmer. He told the kids that the best skill they could have as a farmer in the modern day is the ability to speak Spanish. A lot of his best farmhands didn’t speak any English.
I also just built a house and I happened to be out there as the foundation crew were finishing up. Couldn’t understand a word they were saying because it was all in Spanish (my high school Spanish was a long time ago 😉 ). The really hilarious(?) thing was a bunch of them had Trump stickers in the back windows of their pickups. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand people who vote for someone who is openly racist toward them.
Those are defensive stickers. Deflecting the attention of people who will beat them up or accuse them of crimes. Also, so you really think they were citizens who could vote?
This is equivalent to buying one of those police stickers for the back of your car/truck in hopes that it will get you out of a ticket or three.
Interesting point. I will say I knew at least one Mexican immigrant who was an actual Trumper, but I didn’t talk to these guys to find out what their story was.
Nah – lots of them are genuinely very conservative. And they thought their support of Trump would protect THEM and their extended families, and only those other “BAD” brown people would be the ones deported. Joke’s on them.
An interesting point. I forgot about how many churches were advocating “Republican or you’re going to hell!”
A LOT of Hispanics ARE conservative. And they bought into Trump’s BS hook, line, and sinker. Which has come back to bite them rather hard. Which is why the Republicans are now more afraid of the voters than they are of Trump. And why Texas’ redistricting nonsense may bite them even harder.
Same here – the concrete guys were ALL Spanish speakers other than the owner of the company. So were all the roofers who did the roof on my current house. And for the more typical concrete-block houses that are wood-framed inside with trusses that have been built in the neighborhood, all those guys were Spanish speakers too. The crew that will be installing the SIPs panels on my house are all white so far though (very specialized company that ONLY does this construction method). And from what I have seen, the electricians are generally all white, and so are most, but not all, of the plumbers. Wallboard and paint is universally Spanish speakers. Kind of interesting how it all breaks out. More need to speak English to be a sparky?
I never met the electricians who worked on my house, and they better hope I never do. They did a shit job, whatever their ethnicity, and it’s the one trade who worked on my house that I was really unhappy with. The HVAC guys who came out to fix the problem with my AC (which turned out to be the electrician’s fault) mentioned that they had a lot of problems with this particular company.
My new house is literally next door to my current house. So keeping tabs on things is easy. I check on what they do *daily*. And I know enough about the various systems to call out things that don’t look quite right. So far, only caught a few minor things – but they know I am watching like a hawk too.
Yeah, I was out there every night and caught a few issues. Unfortunately I missed a few too and some weren’t apparent until they finished and they just didn’t do what I asked.
I was very unhappy with my builder on the back half of the project in general though. I suspect he had a higher priced project come in and basically bailed on mine. I never saw him and a lot of stuff I asked for just didn’t get done. I moved in to my brand new custom house and had a list of things to change a mile long >:-(
The worst is they used a different wood for the trim than for the cabinets, but used the same stain for both. Because of that, the color doesn’t match and basically all of my other color selections were based off a trim color that isn’t what got installed. And of course it would be prohibitively expensive to redo it all, so I’m stuck with it.
I have been super unhappy overall with my builder (but am trying to stay positive and professional about the whole thing – it’s a struggle). By the time the thing is done, it will have been a full TWO YEARS since I signed the contract. They said “6-8 months” originally. Just a comedy of stupidity getting things going, and like yours, keeping it going. A lot of it *technically* not their fault, but they have negative communication skills. For example nothing is happening this week, assuming because they are waiting on an inspection from the county. Have they said a word to me about that – of course not! And thanks to the wild delay and Trump’s bullshit, it’s over $100K over the original estimate. But I am stuck with them because they are the only game in the state for this building style. Hindsight being 20:20, I never would have done this and wish I had pulled the plug a year ago and cut my losses.
I am doing the kitchen myself, so any issues there will be my fault, LOL. But that sucks.
Also scary that they messed up the electrical. That can get you killed… At least bad plumbing just costs money.
All that said – everybody I know who has had a custom home built that is in the realm of mere mortals has said “never again”, and every one of them has said they also had a punch list a mile long. I take solace that due to the construction of my house most of the shoddy stuff you see in the YouTube construction videos can’t happen! You can’t have broken trusses and bad insulation jobs when the house has neither of those things. And when you want something that just doesn’t otherwise exist, I guess this is the BS you deal with to make it happen. Thank God I didn’t have to sell my place first or anything like that, and I can about afford the overruns!
I’ve actually built twice now, and while I wasn’t 100% happy with my first builder, in retrospect I’d rather have built with him again than the new one. But like you said, I don’t know anyone who has had a good experience with a builder, especially regarding the punch list. The _only_ punch list items that have ever gotten addressed were things that subs drastically screwed up, like the AC not working or the drains not being vented (they just forgot to remove the outside caps, thankfully, but I was pretty stressed about that for a while). In both houses I had drawers improperly installed and had to fix them myself, which is both kind of a funny coincidence and ridiculous.
I should have stuck to my guns and insisted on a couple of things the second time around:
I chickened out and didn’t make the new builder do either of those, and I’m pretty mad at myself for it because they were both things I knew I should do. I thought I had gone with a higher end builder this time and wouldn’t have some of those problems, but I was wrong.
Fortunately I don’t think anything they did violates code or is necessarily dangerous, it’s stuff like stupid switch layouts and bringing my internet wiring in behind the main panel where you can’t get at it. Oh, and the whole *bleep*ing house is wired with coax, which will never be used because there are exactly zero services here that still use coax wiring. I told them I wanted ethernet everywhere and didn’t need coax, and they gave me coax everywhere and a whole two ethernet ports in the entire house. That’s one I wish I had caught before drywall went up because I would have made them fix it.
So much this. I was lucky enough to overlap my houses too and I can’t imagine if I had had to move twice. It cost a pretty penny, but worth it.
Thankfully, I essentially designed this house right down to the switch placements. So hopefully there won’t be too many screwups with that sort of thing. And I am doing decent chunks of it myself, and providing lots of the small bits like fixtures myself. The plus side is these guys are at least very willing to work with me on all of that.
Probably coursework and/or apprenticeships that aren’t taught in Spanish.
No doubt.
I also get the impression that sparkies are a bit of a fraternity/secret society to really get into. Turd herders, framers and roofers probably take anyone willing to do it.
There’s two sides to that coin. Training and apprenticeship programs can only handle so many students at a time, so presumably you’d want to make sure you’re accepting people who have the requisite brain cells and aren’t liable to drop out partway through, so hypothetically, needing a recommendation to enter the program is a good idea
To Kevin’s point… After a hailstorm in SE Texas five summers ago or so, a lot of residential roofs had to be redone. Pretty much everyone I saw doing the work had more melanin than I do. Upper 90s and humid.
There WILL be a labor shortage (there already is) for events like that and harvesting crops across the country. Stuff last summer rotted in the fields. And meat cutters in the Midwest. And probably more that I haven’t even read about yet. Such a stupid, xenophobic, short-sighted policy.
How do we, as a country, benefit?
And cruel. So, I DO blame orange man and his minions for all this. They’ve blown everything up without a long-term solution. A lot of stuff is going to get a lot more expensive. Just watch. It’s not a matter of college vs trade school education. It’s hard physical labor under unpleasant conditions. That many/most people in this country are unwilling to do.
TBH, I thought it seemed light. It’s 100k for site cleanup. 250-300 to rebuild. I’d call it 500k, and that still might not get you there.
And still everyone involved is lucky it was limited to property damage.
See also: the cost of water in Las Vegas
I think you mean “Court Mandated A””
Stupid is as stupid does… an insurance company or two are going to be writing a few checks. The driver should get as much time in custody as possible, and the longest probation/parole period possible.
Alcohol contributes to a huge percentage of crimes, particularly violence. It’s stupidity in a bottle (or can). Those who suffer the damage and pain are usually not the drinker/perpetrator.
It’s shocking how often the drunk comes through massive accidents that maim and kill other people all but unscathed.
IMHO, do something like this and you are walking for the rest of your life. No second chance to ruin more people’s lives. Thank God that guy went inside.
Tell it to the AAA tow truck driver, then again at AA.
The first step of AAA is admitting your car could have a problem.
Lottery tickets all around!!
Nah already won the “I’m not winning the Darwin” lottery
The poor dope — she always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, she got herself a pool, only the price turned out to be a little high.
I wave a few bottles, then I watch ’em all flock
All the girls wanna play Baywatch
I got a swimming pool full of liquor and they drive in it
Pool full of liquor I’mma drive in it
I’d say the much larger lesson here is to not drink and drive.
Gives new meaning to the term “drunk tank”.
Vegas or Laughlin NV? I THINK she said Laughlin and given the AZ Hospital I think it is down in Laughlin. I think I recognize the station and the reporter from my BHC days. Either way weird
I was wondering as well if it was Laughlin with the AZ hospital thing but the (fuzzy) police report in the video says Las Vegas Metro PD?
And the reporter did say Laughlin
Ah, yes. Next time I’ll turn up the volume on the video!
That thing decanted her right in the pool. I wouldn’t be surprised if she smacked the bottom pretty hard.
I’m just surprised it wasn’t a Raiders player.
As a lifelong Alabama fan, I know exactly who you’re thinking of, and now I’m sad, and pissed off at him all over again.
Gee, thanks.
Next time
It’s Vegas, baby! I lived there for 23 years, just another night in the valley.