EUGENE, Ore. (BN) – A motorist who had slowed down to take a photo of a pretty flower caused a three-car collision in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood, witnesses told Brimborion News.
At the front of the pile-up at the intersection of Van Buren and 3rd, Paul Simmons, 53, said he had seen a squirrel crossing the street in front of him, and had braked to prevent from running it over.
“It ran out in front of me. You know how they do that, without warning? I had to stop!” Simmons exclaimed.
No one on the scene was seriously injured.
Others, however, told a different story.
Krista Mauris, a passerby who witnessed the accident, said she noticed the vehicle decelerate almost to a halt, but not because anything had run onto the road. “It looked like he was looking at the flowers. Those flowers on the fence? I mean, they’re pretty and all, but they’re not worth the whiplash, or getting your ass pile-drived by like four other cars.”
“People stop all the time to look at the beautiful flowers,” added another witness, Devlan Pseudotsuga, 28, who works at the farm-to-table restaurant on whose fence the passion flowers grow. “They stop to smell them, too. Aren’t they beautiful? So rich in aroma. The berries are also edible, and rich in antioxidants.”
“You see that all the time around here,” Mauris continued. “Rainbows, people with backpacks, people pushing shopping carts, graffiti. Nutria. Flowers. There’s, like, no end to the number of distractions that cause people to slow down or stop on a busy road. It’s like they forget they’re operating heavy machinery sometimes.
“Or they’re just really, really high,” she added.
“I know exactly why he slowed down,” said Chad Beaufort, 41, the motorist who rear-ended Mr. Simmons. “He was trying to get a picture of that g–damn flower. I saw him through his back window, holding out his cell phone. While he was driving! What’d he say, a squirrel? It’s a good thing there weren’t, like, six homeless people randomly crossing the street in front of him, while he wasn’t paying attention. Because that happens a dozen times a day in this f—ing town, too!”
