Driver slams into post office, killing customer after pedal mix-up, Georgia cops say

Tanasia Kenney
·1 min read

A woman is dead after a car jumped the curb and crashed through the front of a U.S. post office in Savannah, Georgia, authorities say.

Police said the crash happened just before noon Saturday when 82-year-old Phyllis Champion was attempting to park her blue Toyota Corolla, according to a news release.

Champion confused the gas for the brake pedal, sending the car crashing through a front glass window, authorities said. The car hit four people, including three customers and an employee, before it came to a stop inside the building.

One customer, a 67-year-old woman, was killed, while the three others were taken to a hospital for treatment, according to police. The driver wasn’t injured.

Authorities determined the crash was accidental but are still investigating.

Experts say “pedal-error accidents” can occur with drivers of any age. Government and insurance investigators do not keep data on the ages of drivers involved in pedal misapplication accidents, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. However, anecdotal accounts suggest they most often involve older drivers, according to newspaper.

“As we get older, our neurological processes slow down,” Dr. Peter Rosen, who heads the driving performance lab at Sharp Memorial Hospital’s rehabilitation center, told the newspaper in 2010. “Our vision and reaction time slow down. The conduction rate at which neurons fire slows, so that our brain function slows. Brain function determines driver fitness — that is 99 percent of it.”

The Japan-based Toyota Motor Company has sought to remedy the issue with emergency safety system technology that would override the accelerator if it determines the driver hit the gas by mistake, according to Reuters. The automaker began rolling out the new “accelerator suppression function” in 2020 model cars.

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