Juvenile driver taken to hospital after crashing into trees while airborne

 

Note: This story was last updated at 10:15 p.m.

A Subaru Outback went off Delaware Avenue and appeared to have crashed into trees while airborne at a house at Dixie Lane on Thursday evening.

The juvenile female driver was taken to the hospital. She was already out of the car when Oak Ridge Police Chief Jim Akagi arrived, and a neighbor who heard the crash said the girl was able to walk to an ambulance stretcher.

The Oak Ridge Police Department said it appeared that the girl’s seat belt and air bag likely saved her life. The station wagon came to rest in a spot where the windshield was just a few feet away from a tree in front of the driver, which could have been dangerous if she had been ejected. There is a house on the other side of Dixie Lane, if the car had continued traveling forward.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The car appeared to have been headed south, down the hill on Delaware Avenue, when it went off the left side of the road, hit the lefthand curb, and then apparently went airborne off a small upward-sloping embankment on the side of a driveway. The Outback appeared to have mostly threaded between two trees before hitting a third tree, which had scrape marks about five feet off the ground. The Outback had scrape marks on its passenger side roof, possibly from one of the two trees that it threaded between, authorities said.

There didn’t appear to be any obvious tire skid marks in the area where the Subaru appeared to have gone off the road.

That section of Delaware Avenue was closed for about two hours, from roughly 5:20 to 7:20 p.m., as the Oak Ridge Public Works Department cut the trees around the Outback and a tow truck removed the station wagon.

More information will be added as it becomes available.