Jacqueline Smith has lived on University Drive in Durham since 2006. In that time, she has watched her neighborhood transform into something she never signed up for: a crash zone. Fences knocked down. Walls caved in. Windows shattered. And now, an SUV buried in the side of her house with a severed gas line and enough structural damage to leave the couple wondering where they even begin.
On Thursday evening, just before 10 p.m., officers responded to Smith’s home after a car slammed into it. WRAL’s Breaking News Tracker captured footage of the vehicle being hauled out of the property. The scene was jarring, but for Smith, the emotions attached to it were grimly familiar. She estimates her property has been struck by vehicles somewhere between 15 and 20 times over the years. At this point, she is not shocked. She is exhausted.
“It definitely feels like deja vu, like which side are they going to rip off next?” Smith said. That kind of dark humor is what happens when a person has been through something enough times to start losing count. This was not a one-time freak accident on a quiet residential street. This was the latest chapter in what Smith and her neighbors describe as an ongoing crisis at a dangerously confusing intersection…