Man Crashes $700,000 Car Because He “Unfamiliar With How To Drive Stick”
A 50-year-old Florida man crashed his $700,000 supercar because he doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift.
Written by Andrew Kidd
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
Just because you have money doesn’t always mean you have sense. One 50-year-old owner of a Ford GT found that out after
crashing
his new $700,000 supercar into a tree in Florida.As Road and Track (R&T) reports, the Ford GT owner lost control of his vehicle after trying to downshift from second into first gear while leaving his Boca Raton neighborhood—leading him to crash head-on into a palm tree. The crash left Bob with a wrecked car and an important lesson about car insurance.
How did the $700K Ford GT crash?
The owner, Robert J. Guarini, told police he was “unfamiliar with how to drive stick shift,” which is probably something you’d want to take a quick crash-course on before hopping behind the wheel of a 550-horsepower supercar with a manual transmission.
As
R&T
reports, the impact was severe enough to trigger several of the car’s airbags and prevent the vehicle from running. The GT ended up blocking a sidewalk after crashing into the tree.Guarini told police that because he didn’t have his phone with him, he left the crashed Ford GT unattended and found a ride back to his house, where he contacted police on his landline.
MORE: Car Accidents Have Increased in Texas and Florida for a Similar Reason
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Driver cited, uninsured, unregistered
Guarini was also cited for driving with a suspended license—which he claimed was a “clerical error” at the department of motor vehicles—and given a warning for operating an unregistered vehicle.
Guarini had apparently purchased the car, a 2006 Heritage Edition GT, for $704,000 at a Barrett-Jackson auction in Palm Beach earlier in April. Police said the car was not insured or registered at the time of the crash, but the owner claims it’s covered under an umbrella policy and couldn’t produce the documentation at the time of the incident.
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What is umbrella insurance?
As we’ve
outlined
before, umbrella policies provide coverage over or beyond the liability limits of your other policies. In other words, it protects you from having your personal assets being seized if you are named in a civil suit resulting from a serious accident.Umbrella insurance gives you an extra liability limit above and beyond what your other insurance policies offer, so that in the event you are sued or otherwise required to pay out huge sums of money, your insurance policy will pay this on your behalf rather than your assets being at risk.
Will this Ford GT be covered?
Probably not! In Guarini’s case, an umbrella policy means his assets wouldn’t be seized if the city comes after him for any property he might have damaged due to his inability to pilot a stick shift.
The caveat about an umbrella policy, however, is that it doesn’t cover the driver’s self-inflicted injuries or damage to their property; those are normally covered by your auto insurance (depending on coverage type).
And since his Ford GT wasn’t insured, it’s going to be a pretty expensive out-of-pocket replacement for Guarini.
Don’t be like Bob. If you’re in the market for a new auto insurance policy, Jerry can help you.
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