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, 51, told Brimborion News he had seen a squirrel crossing the street in front of him, and that he had hit his brakes to prevent it from being run over.
“It just 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 had 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 passion flowers, on the fence. I mean, they look 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 blooming,” 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. There’s, like, no end to the number of things that cause gaper’s delay. It’s like people around here forget they’re in a car sometimes.
“Or they’re just really, really high,” she added.
“I know exactly why he slowed down so fast,” said Chad Beaufort, 41, the first motorist to rear-end Mr. Simmons. “He was trying to get a picture of that f—ing flower. I saw him through his back window leaning over, holding out his cell phone. While he was driving! What’d he say, a squirrel? He’s lying. It’s a good thing there weren’t, like, six homeless people randomly crossing the street in front of him at the time. Because that happens around a dozen times a day in this f—ing town, too!”