I’m not always sure how to handle things when some sort of social media something that involves cars goes viral. Sometimes, we just want to ignore it, but then again, our goal is to bring top-notch Brougham-grade quality automotive content to as many people as possible, even if those people didn’t realize how much they were craving and needing said car content. So, when something goes big and has a significant automotive angle, why not try to address it? So that’s what we’re doing now, as I invite you to join me in marveling at a TikTok video created by a person who slowly and destructively sideswiped a parking bollard, causing $30,000 worth of body damage to her new Cadillac Escalade. Over 3.7 million people watched this video, enrapt at a human being blaming an inert metal bollard that is sunk into the ground with concrete for being at fault in a wreck.
I wish I could definitively state why this video has captured the attention of so many; there’s some obvious things, of course. The person making it is conventionally attractive, there’s the undeniable draw of some nice, juicy schadenfreude, and it’s talking about something deeply familiar and relatable to many people: the fact that parking bollards exist. Beyond that I can’t really say, other than there really is something fascinating about watching someone in such complete denial about an event that happened.
The someone we’re talking about, by the way, is a – I guess you’d call them an influencer?– on social media, named Natalie Vacca, with over 270,000 followers on TikTok, and mostly seems to post videos of herself talking about stuff to the camera, with occasional cameos from dogs and kids. Looking at the environment and materials and locations of these videos, this person seems to be doing just fine, financially. They seem to be living a pretty cushy life, and part of that seems to include a recent-model Cadillac Escalade, which plays a crucial role in the video, which, here, you may as well just watch already:
@nat.vacca I cant be the only victim to yellow bank polls. #escalade #cadillac #autobody #crunch #matteblack #banks #cement #damage
I’m sure there’s like half a dozen things that you saw just now that are making you want to scream: someone not understanding the purpose of those bollards, saying “look what your metal pole did to my car” and then stating they don’t think it was their fault, and then calling a door handle a “handlebar” and saying “you hear a crunch and freeze, and then you keep going,” all of this, all of this, it almost feels like too much. Is it an act? Can this be serious? Are there people so clueless about the way Earth works that they believe all these things? And are allowed to drive a 5,600-pound SUV like an Escalade?
Of course, the comments are absolutely brutal. But it, somehow, gets even better, because ol’ Nat posted a response video where, bafflingly, she pretended to not be herself, and instead did the video as some other person “playing devil’s advocate about hitting bank poles” as though there’s two powerful and equal sides to the “should you grind your car into yellow parking bollards, causing lots of damage?” debate. Here, you have to watch this one, so you can enjoy that strangely satisfying feeling of wanting to scream about dumb things, yet again:
@nat.vacca Im just playing devils advocate #bollard #atm #followup #devilsadvocate #stlouis #escalade #cadillac #autobody #crunch #handlebar #satire
First of all, what the hell is the point of doing a response video as though you’re someone who is not you, but is also very clearly you? It feels absolutely unhinged. Why would you choose this? For objectivity? I don’t think objectivity works that way. I don’t think anything works that way?
The part where she’s defending the her-but-not-her for continuing to drive forward after hearing the crunch is particularly maddening. She notes, quite correctly, that her shifter only offers options for forward or reverse travel, and no sideways control. This checks out, because her Escalade (and most other automobiles made for the past century or so) have their “sideways” controls in the form of the fucking steering wheel, a cool little driving hack you in-the-know drivers should be aware of.
Of course, this was noted multiple times in the comments:
Plus, this one gets in the extra little dig with “wheelbar!” Gold! brutal, funny gold!
Look, just in general, I would have thought that most people, upon driving and hearing a loud crunching sound, would know to just stop, and ideally get out of the car and see what the hell is going on. Moving in the direction of travel you were going in when you hit the whatever, especially when you can still hear the sounds of bending metal, is generally a bad idea, at least if your goal is to have less damage to your car.
There’s any number of ways she could have slowly and carefully backed away from the bollard, ideally utilizing some of that “sideways” control offered by the steering wheel, to minimize the damage, instead of raking the entire length of the side of the car against the bollard.
Then there’s the suggestion that, somehow, if these were red instead of yellow, they’d be much better? Was the color what confused her? It seems more like she didn’t see them at all, but if she saw them, saw that they were yellow and thought “Oh! yellow poles! There’s no way a yellow pole could cause any harm! Yellow is the color of bananas and twinkies, nature’s softest elements, so this yellow pole must be quite similar, quite similar indeed!”
Can this all be real? Is this person just trolling for engagement? Is it all a setup, designed to stir click-worthy and monetizible wrath in the minds of people? Is it just fuel for some misogynist’s future, mis-informed screed about gender and driving? Because I don’t want to hear that shit.
I mean, look, we’ve all fucked up while driving. An Escalade is huge and the visibility isn’t that great; I’m not necessarily immune from a similar sort of fuck-up. The actual driving into the bollard isn’t the issue. It’s the making the video about it, with the determined confidence of idiocy, but, then again, making these videos is what this woman does. Her life is content, and this is definitely content. I’m not so different, just, you know, homelier and drive much cheaper cars. If I did this, the only way I could cause $30,000 worth of damage is if I shredded $24,000 in cash against the bollard in the process.
I think this is real, at least in the sense that the event happened, and her reactions are real. But she’s also likely very aware of the engagement and reaction this will have.
But, here I am, talking about it. To you! Matt told me to, but I agreed without protest because I saw the damn videos and was as baffled and captivated as anyone. What does this say about us, all of us? I mean, there’s her, with these baffling decisions and what seems to be as many qualifications to drive an Escalade as your average land-squirrel, and then there’s me, watching it over and over and wondering how this can be and playing right smack dab into the whole internet economy of cultivated outrage.
But still, let’s recap: bollards are there to keep people from driving their Escalades into expensive buildings or over expensive people. If you hear a crunch while slowly driving in a parking lot just stop. See what’s going on before continuing to drive. And, yes, if you hit an inert, immobile object like a bollard or an obelisk or a tree stump, it is definitely, unquestionably your fault.
This Photo Of A Car Crashed Perfectly Into A Driving School Under A ‘Learn To Drive’ Sign Gets Better When You Find Out Who The Driver Was
The Car Crashes From The ’70s TV Show ‘CHiPS’ Are Dazzling Dances Of Car Chaos
That Viral Tweet About Truck Bed Sizes Over The Years Is Just Stupid
I Can’t Stop Watching This Driver Get Their Car Absolutely Wedged In A Sinkhole
That’s why I wholeheartedly endorse the campaign “Ignore an influencer today”.
You will not influence me to ignore an influencer.
So does that mean you were successful?
The house always win
Man, people poo on influencers all the time, but some of them have my respect. A lot of what they do is sponsored, sure, but the good ones honestly disclose the paid-for bits and they really seem to hustle—even moreso than the goofball journalist commenting on the Autopian during her lunch break. (Hi.) I’ll take an influencer who knows their crap and is there to do the work as a press drive partner any day of the week over a journosaur who’s here for the shrimp and thinks he’s the second coming of Juan Manuel Fangio.
…but then you have goofs like this who give the other influencers a bad name. It’s such a broad damn term. I fully admit that I try to stay away from the accounts that smell like undisclosed Shein sponsorships and useless sponcon “lifehacks,” though.
Do you consider yourself a Puffluencer?
Nah. No one listens to me.
I hit one, did about 2k in damage to my 2014 Ram. Never saw it.
That’s because full size trucks and SUVs have become too tall… .hurts visibility.
Yep, I backed into a space next to a ATM sitting in the middle of an urgent care medical parking lot. I went there because I severely sprained an ankle that I had previously broken. Luckily it didn’t break again. However after I hobbled out in pain, I just put the truck in drive and forgot about the ATM stand, and I turned out in a different direction than I backed in. I was actually surprised the damage was as low as it was because I took out 2 door skins and the rocker panel, and the entire front side of the truck had to be painted.
However, I’ve been driving lifted trucks for 30 years and have never done this, so I’m going to chalk it up to not paying attention due to pain, not because trucks are tall.
This. This is why our insurance rates are skyrocketing.
Why blame idiocy when profiteering is more likely?
Because the idiocy is driving it. Look at accident statistics and average repair costs. My insurance company has lost $$ the last couple of years. I suspect they’d have loved to make a profit.
I once hit a fire hydrant in a new parking lot where they hadn’t put a curb around it yet and it was somehow completely hidden by my A pillar. I also did some pretty serious damage! And I recognize that I was an idiot and went to the insurance place with a feeling of great shame.
People need to rediscover shame.
YES! Bring back shame.
“I once hit a fire hydrant in a new parking lot where they hadn’t put a curb around it yet”
And how many clicks did you get for it?
“People need to rediscover shame.”
What’s this ‘shame’ you speak of?
/jk
Not a single one. I am bad at internet.
Throw your driver’s license in a wood chipper, Natalie. That bollard is to protect things from abysmal drivers like you.
Also, while this is 100% her fault, without a doubt, it also makes me think that the Escalade shouldn’t be so damn tall? Or that we should at least require actual skill before handing out drivers’ licenses if we’re going to allow every license-holder on the road to drive one of these big ol’ behemoths?
This is one of the tallest SUVs out there, for Pete’s sake. While the 360-degree camera is very good and extremely useful when it comes to cramming one into a tight space, it’s definitely easier to maneuver something that isn’t so tall and slab-sided. Drivers like this who are so oblivious that they won’t even stop for a loud scraping noise probably won’t stop for more important things like kids or pets, either.
Tbf pureeing a child with your Escalade doesn’t make a loud scraping noise
Shouldn’t it also have, like, a zillion proximity sensors screaming at her BEFORE she hit it? Did she just ignore all that?
Usually the front and rear have decent sensors, but I don’t know about the side. It’d be nice if we had them, but as it sits, that’s where skill? awareness? basic common sense??? comes in. If you’re so oblivious that you keep going when you start to hear your vehicle grinding against a bollard, you do not have said skill and should probably swap for something much smaller with better visibility out of the car and drive with an instructor until you figure out this whole “driving” thing.
Was at the grocery store a few weeks back as I walked to my car post grocery purchase spotted one of those raised bro dozers being approached by a fetching young woman of decidedly petite stature. Said young woman had to scale the running board of the dozer in order to open the door to enter the dozer. The dozer blocked a good third of the parking lot lane and took up 1 1/2 spaces. All to accommodate a woman who weighed maybe 90 lbs and stood less than 5 ft tall. We live in strange times.
Yeah, trucks in particular have gotten wild now. We really need to close the “embiggen vehicle to avoid extra regulations” loophole and try to rein in vehicle size. Even when people can drive them well, there’s a lot of extra blind spots (not to mention extra risk in collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians!) with these bigger, chunkier vehicles that pose an extra risk, and it seems to be mainly aesthetic. Surely the capability of modern consumer-oriented trucks and SUVs could be packaged in more reasonably sized vehicles.
110% agree. I stand 6’5 and the hood of some are above my shoulder. Old timey delivery trucks and semis where not as tall. Things have gotten absurd to the point of parody. The things are dangerous for all the reasons you cite plus the macho invincible behaviour some drivers exhibit.
My state did a social media campaign on highway safety dealing with bad driving habits (lane discipline, staying in your lane in multilane intersections, roundabouts, etc.) the number of people unironically outing themselves as terrible drivers was amazing. Not just for bad habits but for being bad at the actual act of maneuvering a vehicle through a 3 dimensional space, like seeing the entrance and intended exit of an intersection and not being able to visualize a constant radius arc to connect the two points without needing lines to guide them.
Well, shit. My daughter hit the recycling bins whilst backing out of the driveway last Wednesday.
Such a missed opportunity for passive income. Instead of just ME laughing and shaking my head at her, I could’ve gotten the whole internet to join in, for money!
I never realized “bollard” is slang for TikTok Barbies.
Never mind the Bollards
It’s the TicTok Barbies
Track list:
I need a Holliday in the Sun
Liar Liar, pants are looking good
$17 Frappaciano, what a deal!
Take a look at the bollards on her…
Man, this kinda stuff just slides right off my brain. I saw this yesterday and had already forgotten about it.
Remember The Simpsons Treehouse of Terror episode where all the giant mascots came to life and started rampaging? They were defeated when everyone stopped looking at them. So remember the little ditty Lisa sang: Just don’t look! Just don’t look!
Well, it really sounds better when Paul Anka sings it.
This is when I’m glad to be too old for tictac.
Spoiled, entitled, ditz. Psycho eyes Run away as fast as you can! Avoid at all costs (which are too many to list or count).
I don’t believe any of this was for clicks. This is genuinely who she is.
I think I’m aging out of all social media. There’s enough stupid people that I run into every day in real life, I don’t need to go find more online.
Rich person did it on purpose for engagement and views. $$$
This is a fun game I like to play. It goes like this:
See young couple about to have first kid.
They insist their CRV will not be large enough and buy the largest vehicle they can finance.
Two weeks go by, and there’s suddenly a giant scrape along the driver’s side because they don’t know how to compensate for the extra wheelbase in a drive-through.
Despite having a sideways control, the rear wheels do not follow the same path as the rear ones…
This entire situation could be summarized to “Person who believes they are never at fault for their actions should not be driving an unnecessary SUV while possessing power wheel levels of driving ability”. A Civic would be a much better fit but doesn’t carry that sweet sweet display of status.
I’d bet $100 she did it knowing she’d earn more in revenue from social engagement and brand awareness than would cost in repairs. It’s the same calculus people like Mr. Beast use, just on a smaller scale.
Yeah, pretty rich girl wants to be an influencer and make money.
Bollardcorp Industries is really cleaning up on this one. I hear they have a cool ironic self-aware twitter presence as well.
Bollards DO have fan clubs, believe it or not: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-bollard-association
I’ll take the other side of that bet.
I’m sure she is a bad enough driver to do this unintentionally, and then do the sob story about how she is the victim of Big Bad Bollards for views.
In a rare policy misstep in our otherwise completely sensible country, the US allow anyone who can get a license to drive vehicles that large or even larger.
But she’s pretty, so it can’t be her fault.
Total Quinn Morgendorffer.
Then, people get worked up over it, making the folks commenting on her post Jake Morgendorffer.
I do agree with her on one point, those bollards could be a few feet taller so you can see them at all times.
Funny, they are easily seen in a Honda Accord or other normal car-like conveyance.
I live in the land of trucks, the Accord fender height is not the average fender height.
I live in truckland also and on occasion drive a first gen Tundra. And I will admit that I once grazed a bollard protecting the corner of a storage facility where I was unloading a trailer full of stuff. I was sad and embarrassed and repaired the damage myself. Had I only realized that my mistake could have paid for my next two cosmetic surgeries.
Interesting theoretical policy debate here, one which is applicable all over the place: do you plan/regulate for the garbageworld of the real or for the one you want to bring into existence. This is basically the difference between reformism and radicalism.
I’m still trying to define the term “quality”, please stand by…
100% reformist here.
From experience, one cannot see the three foot tall yellow bollard outside a certain Popeye’s drive-thru from the driver’s seat of a 2005 Honda Odyssey because of sight-lines to the right front. $11K for a three piece chicken meal. One might even have to drive home with the sliding passenger door stuck open.
Two things:
Yeah, this is almost certainly intended to generate vitality and therefore clicks. Nothing makes people want to share a story more than “Look how stupid / outrageous / unfair this person is!” It’s the driving force behind the popularity of the McDonald’s lawsuit over hot coffee (which was far too hot for safety, but you have to drill down in a reputable news item to find that out) or most of the headlines or headline-equivalents in any of Rupert Murdoch’s News organs, including The Wall Street Journal to a certain extent.
I remember an elementary-school field trip to a Chesterfield County, Virginia fire station with yellow fire trucks, where it was explained that yellow was a more visible color than red. I haven’t looked into sources or subsequent research to confirm that, but it makes sense. If this happened at a drive-up ATM where she pulled in too close because it’s hard to reach the keypad from the height of an Escalade, the color wouldn’t have made that much difference anyway.
In the world of factory machine safety as regulated by OSHA, Yellow is the color to be used for covers and barriers that separate you or your body parts from Things That Will Hurt Or Kill You. Such covers generally require a power down and lockout/tagout before removal. Then, actual moving Things That Will Hurt Or Kill You are to be colored orange. I forget what red is specified for, but it is something lower down the totem pole. And my understanding is that it’s based on visibility.
In my world (mechanical services), red is fire: both the hookups for the fire department and valves/controls for the sprinkler systems. Also often marks lockout/tag out points. —this is more in the mechanical rooms serving the factory floor than on the floor with robots, etc. I am seeing more facilities placing secure tie-off/hook rings up high and using yellow to draw attention to those.
I do recall sprinkler system piping being painted red in the warehouse rack systems I dealt with.
Watching these videos just makes me sad that TikTok wasn’t around when Titanic hit the iceberg. I’ll bet the captain’s victim and Devil’s advocate videos would have been hilarious.
Also, Vacca in Italian means “cow.” Draw your own conclusions.
Moo!
I assumed it meant “vacant” and found it all too apt.
They share a root in the word “vacare,” Latin for ‘remaining empty.” So, apt.
Vacuous is what came to my mind. All related.
> Vacca in Italian means “cow.”
Was that really necessary though?
They had to call the animal something.
Forget about the “Chinese surveillance” BS, “content” like this is enough of a reason to ban TikTok.
When I was a poor university student, I paid my bills by working night shift at McDonalds as a swing shift manager.
One night, I get a frantic call from a woman (let’s call her Karen) who says that her daughter hit the bollard in our drivethrough. She’s very worried that her daughter might get arrested for hit and run. I walk out to take a look and there is some fresh paint on the bollard (which is well back from the edge of the pavement and is located to protect the building from bad drivers) but no other damage.
I tell the woman not to worry, that it “happens all the time” and her daughter won’t get charged with hit and run.
Monday morning, my boss gets a call from her lawyer saying that we must pay for the damage to their car since if it “happens all the time” there must be something wrong with the location of the bollard. I got chewed out for being the nice guy (but the restaurant refused to pay for the damage to the car).
Henceforth our corporate counsel’s standard legal advice for all matters:
Short form: shut up
Long form: shut the xxxx up
Good time to respond that your employee didn’t have the authority to make that judgement call and that your store will, in fact, be pursuing charges for damage to property and leaving the scene of an accident.
This is the basic idea behind how my 2005 Protege5 got demolished. It was parked on a little road, basically a long driveway, with three houses on it. It was parked in front of my sister’s house, which was the middle of the three houses. A teenage girl visiting the last house backed in to the car, pushed the headlight all the way to the strut tower on the drivers side, and based on the debris and tire tread marks, pushed the car about 18 feet before stopping.
She was driving a lifted Avalanche. The Protege5 was in gear and the ebrake was on, meaning all 4 tires were locked up. When asked by her father (who came when the cops were called) if she somehow didn’t hear any noise, she responded that she just “thought it was the gravel”. “The gravel” stuck out only about 1 foot from my sisters front fence is all, so she was still perfectly comfortable being within knocking distance of that fence and just continuing on her way. Her sister than asked their Dad when they were taking her license away as this was apparently the 3rd accident in 5 weeks, and the second totaled car in her wake.
YEEEESH. I’m sorry, man. Glad her license got yanked after that, at least.
I’ve swiped up against things in two different cars. One was a yellow bollard and the other was the garage opening on my house. The bollard did real damage. The garage opening did minor damage.
And both times, I called myself a dipshit, fixed the damage to the car as best as I could (the house won, so no damage here beyond a little paint scrape) and carried on.
Then again, I have zero TikTok followers and only influence what we have for dinner here at the house that I hit with my car. So I don’t have to feign doing stupid shit to get clicks and eyeballs, or encourage comments pointing out my stupidity.
I did the same! A little more damage to the house (don’t know if I can fix that or not) and some scrapes on the vehicle. The scrapes on the tail light literally “buffed out”, and the rest of the scrapes will be taken care of when the whole thing gets repainted.
I grazed a bollard in my Juke at the CVS drive-up window, but just got a yellow scuff on the fender that was eventually fixed by a body shop after a completely unrelated incident. (I didn’t even ask for it, but as long as insurance was paying…)
I recently hit our dumpster. In my defense I was avoiding a car in our parking lot.
$2900 later…
If you drive long enough, most of us do. I backed our stakebody truck neatly into the dumpster right in front of my boss and our big boss. Good times.
At least I had no witnesses!
I grazed the garage once, too, trying to avoid something on the other side. Luckily, the weatherseal along the side was wet, so the damage was almost imperceptible and only in specific angle of light, so I left it alone. Another time, I backed into a pole, not a bollard, but a tall damn telephone/electric pole that was oddly located in the middle of a parking lot behind two spaces. I was barely moving when I tapped it, but still killed the bumper cover. Was distracted by a woman bending over to pick something up. That’s also how I originally met my ex, so this was a difficult lesson for me to learn.
The irony is that by being a “victim” of the bollards, she proved their necessity.
The property owner didn’t just install them for fun.