Driver Plows Kia Into Miami Gardens Gas Station, Worker Dodges Impact

A woman drove a yellow Kia through the storefront wall of a gas station at the corner of Northwest 177th Street and Second Avenue in Miami Gardens, sending an employee scrambling out of the way and leaving the store with heavy damage. Nobody inside was hurt, and the driver was not hospitalized.

According to WSVN 7News, the driver had just bought something inside the store when she got back behind the wheel and, instead of reversing, drove forward into the building. Station owner Osman Chowdhury told the outlet that the woman drove forward instead of backing up and struck the store walls. He said two employees were inside at the time, and one of them noticed the Kia coming and moved out of the way just before it crashed through.

Employee Escapes Serious Injury

Chowdhury said the driver was okay and that nobody inside the store was hurt, despite the employee nearly being hit by the oncoming car. Crews spent time afterward cleaning up shattered glass strewn across the store floor, and a tow truck eventually hauled the damaged Kia away from the scene. Chowdhury told the station he hoped to reopen the store by Wednesday as repairs got underway.

A Familiar Pattern Across South Florida

The Miami Gardens crash fits a mechanism traffic-safety researchers call pedal error, in which a driver mistakenly presses the accelerator instead of the brake or drives forward instead of reversing. Pedal error accounts for between 20% and 41% of all storefront crashes nationwide, making it the single most common cause, according to the Claims Journal. Gas stations and convenience stores are especially exposed to this kind of mistake because of their frequent customer turnover and head-in parking layouts that face directly into glass storefronts, per the Security Journal Americas, which notes that gas stations and convenience stores suffer roughly 20 such crashes every day across the country.

Florida sees a disproportionate share of these incidents. The Claims Journal reports the state accounts for about 17% of all vehicle-into-building impacts nationally despite representing only 10% of the nation's licensed drivers, a gap researchers attribute to driver demographics, retail density, and parking designs that point straight at building entrances. Within Florida, nearly a quarter of all storefront crashes occur in Miami-Dade and Broward counties combined, according to the Miami Personal Injury Attorney Blog.

Local Crash Volume Adds Context

The Miami Gardens incident arrives amid a broader wave of similar collisions across South Florida in recent months. Hoodline reported on a Mustang crashing into an Opa-locka building just two days before the Miami Gardens crash, and covered a similar collision at a Stuart gun shop earlier in August. In April, an Audi plowed into a North Miami furniture store, injuring a child. Miami-Dade County recorded 55,530 total traffic crashes in 2025, an average of roughly 152 collisions per day, making it the highest-crash county in the state.

What Drivers Face Under Florida Law

Florida law generally treats accidental storefront crashes like this one as civil infractions rather than criminal matters, absent evidence of intoxication or willful disregard for safety. Under Florida Statute § 316.1925, failing to operate a vehicle in a careful and prudent manner to protect life or property constitutes careless driving, a civil infraction carrying fines up to $500 and four points on a driver's license if a crash results, according to Leppard Law. Separately, Florida Statute § 316.061 requires drivers involved in property-damage-only crashes to stop, remain at the scene, and provide identification to the property owner or police, with leaving the scene punishable as a second-degree misdemeanor, per Hubbs Law.

For commercial property owners, incidents like the one in Miami Gardens have fueled a broader push toward crash-rated storefront barriers. The ASTM F3016 standard evaluates protective bollards designed to stop a 5,000-pound vehicle at low speeds of 10, 20, or 30 mph specifically to prevent pedal-error intrusions, according to Reliance Foundry. The stakes for skipping such protections were made clear in February 2023, when 7-Eleven agreed to a $91 million settlement after a driver's pedal error pinned a customer against an Illinois store entrance, a case that established foreseeable harm when head-in parking faces unprotected glass entrances.