Buffalo, NY: ‘World Capital of Drivers Crashing Into Buildings’

Buffalo, NY: ‘World Capital of Drivers Crashing Into Buildings’
A screenshot of Buffalo's "jaydriving" collisions on a Google map created by Cynthia Van Ness.
Catherine Yang
2/10/2014
Updated:
7/18/2015

Librarian Cynthia Van Ness put together a map of all the reported sites where drivers crashed cars into buildings since 2006. 

“Let others fume about ‘jaywalking.’ This is a map of ‘jaydriving,” the map description reads.

Each of the 150 crash sites marked leads to a link to a news story of the crash.  “Note how often the car is blamed instead of the driver,” Van Ness adds in the description.

In 2009 a truck driven by a 79-year-old man experiencing heart problems “sheared off a telephone pole early Sunday before careening into the porch of a Wheatfield Street home,” according to to the Niagara Gazette. Ten years earlier, an elderly woman had done similarly.

In 2012 a Buffalo News delivery truck crashed into a building after being struck by another vehicle. “There were no injuries, but the building has extensive damage,” according to WGRZ.

In 2013, “a stolen taxi cab crashed into a house” after a police chase, as reported by Time Warner Cable News. The driver had tried to rob a pharmacy before stealing the taxi from a cab driver’s home.