Police say a driver is recovering from minor injuries after their car went off the road, rolled over an embankment, and landed upside down in a suburban Maple Ridge backyard on Friday.
Ridge Meadows RCMP say officers were called to the 14000-block of Mier Drive around noon after receiving reports of a single-vehicle rollover.
The dramatic incident, which was captured on video and widely shared on social media, shows the vehicle careening over an embankment and becoming airborne before crashing down.
RCMP spokesperson Corp. Brett Urano said the car caused damage across multiple backyards before finally coming to rest upside down in the last yard affected.
He said RCMP are investigating the cause of the crash alongside the Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service, and that officials have already determined that driver impairment was not a factor in the collision.
“We’re still determining if the vehicle had a malfunction or it was a driver error,” Urano told CBC News. “We’re also fortunate that there was no one in any of the yards at the time and no one was injured other than minor injuries to the driver.”
B.C. Emergency Health Services confirmed that two ambulances were dispatched to the scene just before noon on Friday. Paramedics treated the driver on-site before transporting them to the hospital for further care.
Police have refrained from providing any identifiers of the driver, but said they had their seat belt on at the time of the accident.
“Without their seatbelt, I imagine this would have had a very different outcome,” Urano said.
Witness Kevin Kunst, a Chilliwack resident who was passing by when the crash occurred, captured the aftermath on video and described the scene as unusual.
“You don’t see that every day,” he told CBC News. “[The car] was coming down a big hill and then it hit a ditch and then it … flew.”
He said the incident reminded him of the popular series The Dukes of Hazzard, which features two brothers who race through a fictional town in their car.
Investigators are asking anyone with information, dash cam footage or video of the incident to contact Ridge Meadows RCMP at 604-463-6251.
