Unlicensed car wash attendant crashes client’s SUV

A routine trip to the car wash went horribly wrong for a Brampton couple last week when an attendant accidentally totalled their SUV.

Nadia Gangoo said it happened on Friday morning — her birthday — when she and her husband Ian had taken her Ford Expedition to Super Suds Car Wash on Hurontario Street for a VIP Super Clean wash.

After the SUV went through the car wash on a conveyor belt, an employee was supposed to shine the tires. He got into the car and then floored the gas pedal instead of the brake, propelling the vehicle through a snow bank and chain-link fence. It then launched off a five-foot retaining wall into the air and took out a tree before hitting the road and crashing into a stone wall.

Ian Gangoo said it was “like a scene out of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’”

“It happened so fast,” he said. “The car just took off and went flying through the air.”

The car was totalled — both airbags were deployed, two doors were fused shut, the rear tires popped when the car hit the road, and a lot of fluid leaked from the vehicle. On top of that, their child car seats have been rendered unusable because of the crash.

“When you take your car to the car wash, it shouldn’t come out the other end like this,” Nadia Gangoo said.

A manager at Super Suds said the employee’s job was only to wipe down vehicles. He never had clearance to get behind the wheel because he doesn’t have a driver’s licence.

He said nothing like this has ever happened before and the company is very sorry. Its insurance will cover the damage, he added.

Pete Karageorgos of the Insurance Bureau of Canada said normally the vehicle owner reports the crash to his or her insurance company, which will then track down the responsible party.

“In a case like this, once the insurance company for the vehicle owner resolves or settles the claim, they’re going to see that the responsible party here was the [car wash]’s employee,” he said. “So, ultimately the insurance company will look to the [car wash] and their insurance provider to reimburse them for the claim.

“At the end of the day it shouldn’t impact the vehicle owner’s premiums at all, or fault, because obviously there was another party responsible.”

Ian Gangoo bought the car with cash for his wife and their four kids. He’s worried he won’t get close to what he paid if it’s a write-off.

The attendant who crashed the vehicle has been suspended. Management is still deciding whether he will continue to work there.