High profile, high price, car crashes are a staple among notorious celebrities. Car accidents aren’t uncommon among non-celebrity drivers, but the class of vehicles involved when the rich and famous crash are what sets their fender benders and tragic accidents apart from everyday traffic incidents.
The conversation on celebrity car crashes wouldn't be complete without mentioning Lindsay Lohan’s trademark antics. In 2005, when Lohan was 19 years old and just beginning to garner a reputation for unpredictable behavior, the actress crashed two cars while evading paparazzi on the streets of L.A.
The second, and more serious, crash happened when Lohan drove her Mercedes convertible into a van that was trying to turn in front of her. Lohan and her passenger, a female friend, as well as the driver of the van walked away relatively unscathed. The Mercedes, however, was badly damaged and had to be towed from the scene.
Car crashes can happen even in the most controlled of situations, as legendary comedian Eddie Griffin discovered while driving a $1.5 million Ferrari around a closed course racetrack. In 2007, the movie producer David Sadek allowed Griffin to borrow his Ferrari Enzo for a celebrity car race. There were only four Enzos manufactured between 2004 and 2007, so Sadek was understandably heartbroken when Griffin slammed into a concrete divider and then a wall while navigating the exotic car around a practice lap of the track. Griffin, luckily, wasn't badly hurt in the crash but Sadek’s beloved Ferrari Enzo was smashed beyond repair. Griffin joked later that he may be a funny man good at many things, but driving powerful cars at high speeds is not one of them.
Billy Joel has been involved in several highly publicized car crashes, most of which involving him crashing his car into stationary objects instead of other vehicles. The pop music icon famously, or infamously, lost control of his car on a slick road in residential New York back in 2004, crashing headlong into a house. The homeowner reported the Joel was shaken, but not intoxicated, and there was no arrest made. No one was seriously injured, but the crash reminded the media of Billy Joel’s long history of car accidents that proceeded his admittance into a rehab for substance abuse treatment. Joel was hospitalized in 2003 after crashing a different car into a tree, an accident that totaled the car, after narrowly escaping tragic injury after a similar crash in 2002. That makes three notable, expensive, car wrecks in just over two years.
When celebrities crash expensive cars, whether on public roads or closed race tracks, people pay attention. Whether the accident was proceeded by a high speed chase with photographers, or the result of a slippery road, these infamous crashes all destroyed incredibly expensive cars in a very visible way.
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