A woman crashed her car because she saw a spider

Twitter / @WCSOOregon

There’s only one word for this: Relatable.

Earlier this week, police in Cairo, New York, posted photos of a nasty-looking car wreck — caused by a spider.

In a Facebook post on the police department’s feed, police said the car’s driver panicked when she spotted the spider in the car with her. She accidentally ran off the road and smashed into a stone barrier. The driver injured her leg in the crash, and the car took a serious beating. No word on the spider or its injuries.

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The cops said they mention the spider because it was a “contributing factor that is not covered too often.” It sounds like they’ve seen this happen before!

The post urges drivers to “overcome the fear” and simply pull over in a safe place. “We know that it is easier for some drivers than others but PLEASE, try to teach new drivers and yourselves to overcome the fear and pull over to a safe place,” the caption reads. “Lives depend on it.”

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Very true — it’s lucky that no other drivers or pedestrians were injured when the driver lost control.

I want to know what this thing looked like, because it must have been a whopper.

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Yikes!

(That isn’t the accident-causing spider, by the way. It’s a teeny-tiny jumping spider from Turkey.)

As the Cairo Police Department implied, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon reported a similar accident in 2016. A driver crashed her car spectacularly when a spider dropped down from the rearview mirror to wave hello.

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After spotting the spider, the driver swerved, lost control and went off the road, rolling the car in a ditch. Sheriff’s deputies said the car was totaled.

Luckily, the driver only suffered a minor scratch on her hand.

The spiders we have here in the U.S. can certainly be freaky, but they’re lightweights compared to the arachnids in Australia. The enormous, terrifying huntsman spider (seen below) lives nearly everywhere Down Under and — wouldn’t you know it? — loves to hide in little crevices and cracks.

According to the Australia Museum, these not-so-little guys are famed as being the hairy so-called ‘tarantulas’ on house walls that terrify people by scuttling out from behind curtains. Their flattened bodies allows them to go unnoticed in small spaces —  an ability aided by their legs which, instead of bending vertically, bend and twist outwards, almost like a crab.

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Indeed, the huntsman‘s been implicated in a number of Australian car accidents.

In 2017, a huntsman plopped onto a man driving in Blaxland, outside of Sydney, causing a four-car crash that sent seven people to the hospital.

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In two separate incidents, huntsman spiders appeared just as drivers pulled up to a boat ramp in Rowland Reserve park. One spider crawled across the driver’s lap; the other came crawling across the passenger seat at the driver.

Both drivers jumped out of their cars in a panic. Both cars rolled into the water and sank. (All involved were uninjured, except perhaps the spiders.)

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The lesson — remember to pull your car over — and out of gear — if a critter surprises you on the road.

Sweet dreams tonight!

Animals, News, Wild Animals
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About the Author
Kathleen St. John
Kathleen St. John is a freelance journalist. She lives in Denver with her husband, two kids and a fiercely protective Chihuahua.

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