Driver says Lover’s Leap accident not her fault

Vindication is a wonderful feeling. Just ask Ruth Hart.
Hart was the driver of the car which almost six months ago plunged off of Lover’s Leap in Hannibal. Hart of Milan, Ill., and her passenger, Nancy Strohl of Rock Island, Ill., escaped the mishap without serious injury.
Following the Aug. 12 plunge, Hart told investigators that she believed the accident was her fault, assuming that she had accidently pressed the accelerator instead of the brake as she pulled in to park her car after reaching the top of Lover’s Leap.
“I couldn’t think of anything else. I had no idea that it could have been something else,” said Hart.
Hart’s perspective regarding the accident’s cause changed in October when she was notified by Toyota of a recall involving the Camry she was driving that afternoon.
“It was when they had the recall that it hit me - it could have been it wasn’t my fault ... that it was a problem (with the car),” she said. “The first recall was about floor mats. It came about a month-and-a-half after I’d had this accident. In the meantime I thought it was my fault. That was the only thing I could figure out, that I must have hit the gas feed instead of the brake.”
While Hart now suspects that her Camry’s accelerator was to blame for the accident, she has no proof. Her car, which was totaled in the plunge, has long since been scrapped and sold for parts. While she can’t prove her innocence, Hart no longer feels embarrassed about the accident.
“I’d been driving for years and usually when we go out of town I’m the designated driver,” she said, noting that prior to the spectacular crash her driving record had been very good. “Then to think I could have pulled something like that, it really bothered me.”
Strohl is happy that her friend no longer is shouldering the burden of guilt for the accident.
“She was beating herself up thinking she had done something wrong and she hadn’t,” she said. “That makes her feel relief to know it wasn’t her fault. We know that it had to be the car.”
Even before the Camry recalls were announced, Strohl had no qualms about riding with Hart in the driver’s seat.
“She’s an excellent driver,” she said.
Not only does Hart feel that news of Camry’s problems vindicates her, but older drivers in general.
“That’s what bothered me, too. The first thing that goes up there is your age. Then they say, ‘She shouldn’t have been up there to begin with,’” said Hart, who is in her 70s.