A father and daughter decided to take advantage of the fine weather last sunday for a trip to the local supermarket (closed on sundays), so that the student driver daughter could practive reverse parking the car on the empty lot. This is perfectly legal and usually quite safe except... the rest of the family decided to tag along too.

As an additional piece of information, manual transmissions are so common in Europe that student drivers are required to take their exams on them. Reverse parking requires fine-tuned coordination of gas and clutch pedals in addition to hand to eye coordination for steering while looking rearwards.

Student drivers can be expected to be rather nervous and unsure even when nobody is watching. Having your mother and two sisters on the back seat tends to increase the stress and reduce rearward visibility. Which is probably why the mother decided to leave the car.

And this is where thing started to go wrong. The mother decided to place herself on the kerb right behind the parking slot where her daughter was attempting to park the car. A prudent person would place oneself off to the side, just in case. Not this lady. And then she decided to sit down.

Remeber the part about stress and reduced visibility? The exact sequence of events is not clear, but long tire marks left on the ground support the most likely version:

While the student driver could not see her mother sitting on the kerb while looking out of the rear window, the father - using the side mirror - could. And yelled "stop!". Which caused the daughter to release the clutch and stomp hard on ... the accelerator instead of the brake.

The mother was hit by the rear end of the car and died at the scene.

Submitted on 03/10/2014

Submitted by: Gunter
Reference: http://derstandard.at/1392687684140/Tochter-ueberfaehrt-Mutter-bei-Uebungsfahrt-Offenbar-Gas-und-Bre

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Candi said:
Definitely Toss: No Self-Selection
Sorry, Gunter, but this was a heartbreaking unintentional event. There's nothing here to suggest a Darwin to me. Other moderators may differ. Thanks anyway, and submit again.

James said:
Definitely Toss: Not Amusing
Agreed...

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