Crash wrecks shared street sweeper
Officials are looking for the driver of a vehicle they say contributed to the May 11 incident.
Town officials are looking for the driver of a vehicle they say contributed to the crash of a street sweeper that was shared among four municipalities.
Woodstock Supervisor Bill McKenna said there were no injuries but the 12-year-old sweeper was totaled. “One of our highway workers was driving the street sweeper ... up Glasco Turnpike, going west, as a white car driven by an older woman, heading east, started to swerve into his lane,” McKenna said Tuesday. “He went to the right and ended up in the ditch. The other driver corrected and continued on.”
McKenna said the accident occur at 9:45 a.m. May 11 and that the driver of the sweeper driver did not get the make, model or license plate number of the other vehicle.
“We’d like to talk with that driver,” he said.
“In fairness to the driver [of the car], the street sweeper didn’t crash into a tree, it didn’t roll over, and I’m sure if you looked back in your rear-view mirror, it wouldn’t have appeared that anything was wrong,” McKenna said. “I probably would have kept driving, too.”
Under an intermunici-
pal agreement, Woodstock shared the street sweeper with the towns of Hurley, Ulster and Shandaken.
“We had another week or two with it, and then it was going up to Shandaken for
a couple weeks, and then it [was going] into storage,” McKenna said.
McKenna said that though street sweepers appear to be indestructible, they have moving parts that cannot withstand such impact.
“They look like a tank, but underneath, with the brushes, there are these
brackets that come down,” he said. “The brackets just got all twisted.”
The sweeper was purchased three of four years
ago, used, for $50,000. Woodstock officials did not know how much reimbursement to expect from an insurance claim.