Florida Rolls-Royce Driver Somehow Smashes Into A $3 Million Dollar Sculpture In Someone’s Backyard

Rolls Royce Statue Crash Topshot
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Most of the time, if you hit something that isn’t a building while driving a Rolls-Royce, you don’t damage something worth more than the car itself. Unfortunately, the Palm Beach Daily News reports that a rare exception recently happened in Palm Beach, Fla. when a 66-year-old driver ploughed her Rolls-Royce through a multi-million-dollar sculpture in someone’s backyard. This is so far outside my tax bracket that I just need to take a step back and examine the situation. Unfortunately, all the photos floating around are very low-res, so we’ll need to zoom in instead.

Rolls-Royce Dawn

For a start, the Rolls-Royce involved in this very expensive shunt isn’t the ultra-rare Phantom Drophead Coupe, but instead a more common Dawn. Despite not being the hi-po Black Badge version, 563 horsepower and 605 lb.-ft. of torque still make it quick, and the exclusivity of the Rolls-Royce badge makes it still expensive. Figure a price tag north of $150,000 even for higher-mileage examples. Granted, higher-mileage for a Rolls-Royce isn’t nearly the same as higher-mileage for most cars, but that’s the world of high-end cars for you.

It’s already impressive that this driver managed to send her Dawn through a backyard, but she also managed to take out a very expensive sculpture before getting wedged on the seawall. The Palm Beach Daily News reports that the homeowner estimated the cost of the sculpture at $3,000,000, although it’s hard to put a finger on value due to the strange world of art. The sculpture itself was made of coral, which somehow seems both excessive and ordinary. I guess Velveeta cheese just doesn’t hold up to the elements like coral does.

Rolls-Royce Statue Crash 1

While it’s easy to look at this as simply a case of rich person problems, there might be an actual big problem underneath the surface of this story. As reported by the Palm Beach Daily News, “Officers said the woman told them she had no recollection of the hours leading up to the crash.” Uh, that’s not good. I’m not a doctor, but something seems off if a person doesn’t remember a chunk of their waking hours. What’s more, details around the crash are a bit odd. According to the paper, the driver came up the driveway, hit a curb, stopped, and then proceeded to hit the sculpture. Is it possible the driver had some sort of medical event? Perhaps.

While nobody was injured in this incident, it brings up some important questions about driving. Namely, what would you do if another driver is motoring erratically or just seems out of it? Is there a duty to call it in, or are driving standards so low that something like that just seems normal? As necessary as driving is in most of North America due to woeful public transit infrastructure, it’s also a privilege that can be revoked if public safety is in question. Perhaps, at the end of the day, we just can’t trust everyone else on the road without huge, systemic changes. As ever, drive defensively. Even the best drivers in the world still have to look out for everyone else.

(Photo credits: Palm Beach Police, Rolls-Royce)

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81 thoughts on “Florida Rolls-Royce Driver Somehow Smashes Into A $3 Million Dollar Sculpture In Someone’s Backyard”

  1. Alcohol and Xanax is my guess. Man it must be fun to be rich. Drive around wasted, own pretentious sculptures, smash pretentious sculptures, destroy a Rolls, who cares? The only consequences are huge numbers going down slightly and they’ll be back up soon.

  3. Closest I got is someone missed the very obvious turn in front of my house and took out my mailbox.

    Also that two tone paint on the Rolls is an abomination.

    1. The price was probably the selling point. A lot of expensive art is purchased as a place to put a lot of money, rather than for the sake of art. If you have a lot of cash money you don’t want to show as income (for tax or laundering reasons), you buy some art with it. You can sell immediately to launder your money or hold on to the art until you’ve established a value for long enough to sell at a slight gain or loss to show far less income (because you have moved money around to show the cost of the painting over a few years and then show you lost money on your investment).

      Or, when you need money, you apparently get a friend to “accidentally” destroy your art for insurance purposes. The benefit here is that you don’t claim any gains on the art. It was destroyed and you just recouped your loss. Probably at a gain, but who’s counting?

    2. Coral takes a very long time (0.3-2cm per year) to grow and is protected in many areas.

      This artwork sounds like a big F U to the environment.

  7. The oddities in the story remind me a bit of an accident I was (barely) involved with a few years ago. One evening, some dude looking really out of it while driving a newer Lexus just comes meandering down the wrong side of the main 4-lane road in town. He lightly contacted the rear bumper of my ’84 Grand Marquis and then delicately drove into the lady behind me at less than 5 mph. Then he backed up, slowly turned around, and started swerving back and forth, bumping into a few more cars before stopping at a light. Luckily at that point someone had the where-with-all to jump out of their car, opened his door, and grabbed the keys out of his car. The guy just sat there in a daze until the police arrived.

    I later found out the guy supposedly had a bad prescription drug/alcohol interaction at a nearby restaurant. His insurance company actually contacted me to see how bad my car was damaged. I told them that while he did clip the bumper, there was no noticeable damage, I didn’t feel like getting involved, and I had been driving a $400 beater anyway. Not that I often feel much empathy for insurance companies, but I figure they were going to need everything they had at their disposal to deal with the lady behind me. Even though she had been out of her vehicle laughing at the absurdity of it all and talking with myself and others about the slight front end damage to her SUV, she made sure to request another ambulance to the scene and was later loaded into the back of said ambulance with a full neck brace.

    I’m guessing if this lady can afford a Rolls, she can afford the good drugs as well.

        1. One that won’t make me nervous, wonderin’ what to do, one that makes me feel like I feel when I’m on ‘Ludes… and booze, and Xanax, and Alzheimer’s…

      2. That depends on which three hours I’m forgetting.
        Is it like some ‘Vanilla Sky’ shit?
        Do I get to choose a three hour chunk out of my past to forget?
        Can I break it up into smaller increments of time and forget spiders exist?
        I mean… I was on some pretty good drugs (post accident) that time a cute EMT cut my pants off with trauma shears but I’d like to forget that whole experience.

      3. A LOT of people ignore the alcohol interaction warnings on medications.

        That said, the Ronal Reagan defense (“I don’t remember…”) is used way too successfully to dodge drunk driving charges.

  8. The only thing that would make this more Florida is if it had been the front door of a Publix instead of a sculpture, and if the car had been either a beige LeSabre or a beige Kia Soul instead of a Rolls-Royce.

    Also, the standard Florida excuse when something like this happens is “I don’t understand it, I was standing on the brake pedal but the car kept accelerating”

    1. I’m sure the courts will come back with “the sculpture invaded her property and she was standing her ground, therefore she is innocent”

  9. “Karen and Dawn sitting by the sea
    t.i.l.t.i.n.g.
    First comes the curb, then comes the art
    then by the end, the fraud falls apart!”

    On a serious note: Who knows, but it is possible to have a seizure and not remember a whole lot for many hours. It’s happened to me a few times. If it was a legit accident, there are plenty of ailments that could have caused it. Either way, that is one impressive use of low-speed torque, I’ll give it that.

  10. Found it pretty quickly on Google Maps because Canterbury Lane, Palm Beach is pretty short. This appears to be the street in question:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@26.7266563,-80.0364898,19z

    It ends with a private gate:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@26.7266755,-80.0360607,3a,75y,101.48h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sViZShjF64BWiyrz23ckMpQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DViZShjF64BWiyrz23ckMpQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D102.81306%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

    If you drive straight through that gate, it’s a straight shot to the beach. Technically, you’re driving through their yard, but I’d argue it’s more of a side yard:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@26.7266216,-80.0357656,157m/data=!3m1!1e3

    And here’s the view from the beach, where they exited:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@26.7266148,-80.0348659,3a,75y,270.21h,86.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sNxs6ENa621Os2yVuwfrLfA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DNxs6ENa621Os2yVuwfrLfA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D61.517117%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

    2. Yes Palm Beach is an island of rich entitleds, then you have West, North, Royal Palm Beach. Where the employess drug dealers, cosmetic surgeons nannies, prostitutes, security people live went to HS there very fun area.

    3. I blame google maps. It showed the fastest way to the beach and she was just following directions. The other day google maps tried to send me through a gravel pit to get to my destination. I noped right out and stayed on paved roads.Turns out it was correct and would have gotten me there but dodging dump trucks and back hoes is not my idea of fun.

    1. “Bullshit, bullshit, derivative….we’re all just air conditioners walking around on this planet, screwing each other’s brains out”

      -Ongo Gablogian

  12. Florida gonna Florida. I’m not going to shed any tears over the problems of the 1% since they’re actively ruining the world with their sociopathy as we speak. When it comes to people driving dangerously I live in DC so there’s no use in ever involving the police in anything whatsoever…plus they don’t even handle traffic enforcement within city limits so they wouldn’t do anything anyway. It’s why stuff in our area makes national headlines so often…DC and Maryland are the Wild West right now when it comes to driving.

    But in other areas I’ve called visibly drunk drivers in before. They can get absolutely f**ked as far as I’m concerned because they’re selfish assholes who don’t care about their own well-being or the well-being of others. My rule with snitching is simple…if it’s a victimless crime and/or you’re not harming anyone I truly don’t care and don’t consider it my business. But if you’re putting other people at risk or actively harming them with your behavior then you deserve to be held accountable.

  13. The only thing more Floridian than an extremely stupid car crash is an extremely stupid car crash staged for the purpose of insurance fraud.

  14. It was just revealed that Florida has the most miles of lead pipe in its water system of any state in the USA, something like 110,000. Leaded water does not make for high octane brains.

  15. I’m often behind drivers that seem so clueless that I honestly wonder if they’re a 12 year-old taking their parents’ car for a joyride. But if I called the cops every time I saw an idiot driver, the cops would stop taking my calls.

    1. The sculpture, and the car are not to be touched. This is a full-blown installation now, easily worth between $7 to $9 million. Maybe as high as $12 or even $15 million by the time the next hurricane rolls in.

  19. I once saw a car weaving all over the highway, including multiple times going way across the center line then over-correcting almost into the ditch. Again and again for miles. Called 911 and was told it wasn’t an emergency and the county sheriffs weren’t interested.

    1. I called the Florida Highway Patrol to report a semi driver who was more interested in his phone than the road. He sped through a work zone, nearly rear-ended multiple drivers, and I still saw him driving many miles later after he would have stopped at a weigh station.

  20. Need cash? Your statue investment not appreciating as much as you’d like? Has the used car market gone down and your Rolls depreciated more than you hoped? Have I got the trick for you!!

    Jokes aside, hopefully everyone is okay.

  21. “Perhaps, at the end of the day, we just can’t trust everyone else on the road without huge, systemic changes.”

    So what “huge systemic changes” do you have in mind?

    1. I’d guess a robust public transit system so that taking someone’s license doesn’t drastically reduce their ability to participate in society, stricter licensing requirements so that we keep verifying people are capable of driving safely, and maybe vehicle inspections that ensure vehicles on the road are unlikely to experience sudden mechanical failures.

    3. Brain implants that control your every move, or force fields that reduce all crashes to 10g’s or less including pedestrians. Ooh what about time travel so if you crash you can just reverse time.
      Giant spam can bumpers perhaps?

  22. I just left Florida for a car show…. Dealing with drivers down there while driving a truck with a show car on the trailer…. I fully understand this happening down there… The geriatrics pay no attention to common traffic laws or use of signals and such….

    Yea Floruda

  23. And the airbags didn’t deploy? No tire tracks going around the sculpture? Hitting it, backing up, going around and not hitting the tree on the right?

      1. Also hitting the sculpture hard enough to push it off the foundation and then it leaning back towards were the car hit it. It had to of hit the car, but there’s no damage to the top part of the grill and hood..

  24. According to the paper, the driver came up the driveway, hit a curb, stopped, and then proceeded to hit the sculpture. Is it possible the driver had some sort of medical event? Perhaps.

    Is it possible this is insurance fraud, and the sculpture is actually worth very little? Also perhaps.

    1. Rich people know other rich people, and the “memory loss” and ability to hit the sculpture, not get hung up on it, and then drive to the seawall is pretty suspicious. I wonder if the owner needed money faster than taking it to auction would allow and/or did not expect to get insured value at auction.

      High-value art is often (usually?) just money laundering or tax evasion, and rich people really don’t like when the market gets soft if they need cash. I’m also not sure if you’d have to report gains via insurance payout, tax-wise.

  25. That’s inflation for you… Grey Poupon is too pedestrian to ask for, now the Rolls Royce crowd is asking for art installations.

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