A car crashed through the side of Elite School of Beauty in east Vancouver on Saturday afternoon, causing significant damage to the building and sending one person to the hospital while roughly 50 students were inside. The 87-year-old driver told officers she accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, and police say impairment was not a factor in the collision.
Vancouver Police Department officers responded to the crash at the school's location in the 2600 block of NE 114th Avenue. The vehicle struck the side of the building, leaving a gaping hole in the structure. As KIRO 7 News Seattle reported, the collision happened Saturday, confirming the exact timing of the incident that police detailed in their weekend announcement.
Elite School of Beauty sits inside the Four Seasons Shopping Center, a strip retail complex near NE 112th Avenue and Burton Road, according to property records cited by The Columbian. The crash brought a vehicle into the school's storefront while students were inside.
A Family-Run School Caught in the Chaos
The vocational school has operated in Vancouver since 2011 and offers hair-design training through a 1,400-hour program. With roughly 50 students inside at the time of the crash, the scale of the damage could have been far worse. Only one person was transported to the hospital, though the extent of that person's injuries was not detailed in police's public statement.
Why Parking Lot Pedal Errors Keep Happening
Crashes like this one are more common than many drivers realize. An estimate extrapolated from North Carolina data puts pedal-misapplication crashes nationwide at roughly 16,000 a year. Technical NHTSA research goes further, showing that 77 percent of news-reported pedal misapplication crashes happen in parking lots or driveways rather than on open roads, where low-speed maneuvering near buildings leaves little margin for error.
Research has reported higher rates of pedal-error incidents among younger and older drivers. That pattern raises questions about whether any state review process could apply here.
Vancouver police have not indicated that impairment played a role, and the driver's own account to officers centered on a pedal mix-up rather than any underlying medical condition.
Other Recent Vehicle Crashes
This is not the only vehicle-into-structure incident the region has seen recently. Hoodline previously reported on a driver who slammed into a Longview home before fleeing earlier this month. No arrests or citations were mentioned in connection with Saturday's crash at Elite School of Beauty, and the full extent of the structural damage and any disruption to classes has not yet been detailed.
