(UPDATED) The driver of a silver Nissan sedan must have had a grave realization about 1:30 p.m. Monday during a novel crossing of the Cooper River: “How in the hell did I get in this lane?”
A video by Charleston Realtor Jameson Cokas shows the car slowly rounding a turn in the pedestrian-bike lane of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, not a regular lane for a car. In the distance, you can see cars in proper lanes. And then there were runners, bikers and walkers in their lane, stunned by the slowly moving vehicle where it wasn’t supposed to be. One runner seemed to hug the fence just as the video ended.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Cokas said when he saw the car in the wrong place. He snatched his phone to get a video of what may be a Charleston first on the Ravenel Bridge. “You don’t see that every day!”
Charleston police issued a statement at 5:21 p.m., which was about the time the Charleston City Paper first published a story on the incident. Spokesman Anthony Gibson said the department located and stopped the vehicle after getting several reports of it in the pedestrian walkway.
“Officers learned that the driver, while visiting from out of town, had unintentionally entered the walkway while attempting to follow directions from their navigation system,” he said. “Considering the vehicle’s position and the absence of turnaround space, our officers safely escorted the driver along the walkway, taking care to avoid any pedestrians, until they reached the Mount Pleasant side of the bridge.
“Here, the driver was able to merge back onto the road without incident. A citation was issued, and fortunately, there were no injuries resulting from this incident.
Cokas said he was headed to a real estate showing in Mount Pleasant when he saw the gray car in the wrong place. A few minutes later, he sent the video to a group of friends and it started making its way through cyberspace.
“They all said, ‘How on Earth could that happen?”
Indeed. How?
Watch the video
Skyler Baldwin contributed to this report.
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