A 60,000-pound wheel loader suddenly came barreling down a busy street recently in Milford, Massachusetts, hitting a car and toppling roads signs.
(Watch the video of the incident at the end of this article.)
The Milford Police Department received multiple 911 calls about the loader’s crash at 1:38 p.m. August 15. When officers arrived, they found the loader had come to rest at a guardrail and utility pole it hit.
“An on-scene investigation revealed the equipment experienced brake failure while traveling down Fortune Boulevard, colliding with another vehicle and several road signs before ultimately coming to rest against the utility pole,” the department said.
On the video, the loader with an operator in the cab can be seen clipping the front end of a white SUV as it barrels down the street. The loader then runs over road signs at a busy intersection, crosses the street into traffic waiting at the stoplight, narrowly misses a pickup truck, and hits the guardrail and utility pole where it stops. Soon after, a truck with flatbed trailer shows up.
The wheel loader was being loaded onto a trailer at a nearby tow shop when it started rolling down the street; a system failure led the brakes to go out and reduced steering, reports milforddailynews.com.
“It’s a miracle no one was killed or seriously injured,” said Milford Police Chief Robert Tusino. “If a motorist had entered the intersection just one second earlier, we could be facing an unspeakable tragedy.”
Milford police posted these surveillance videos of the incident to its Facebook page:
