A car and a van were “demolished” after a crash on a quiet Elgin street just before the bells on Hogmanay.
At 11.22pm on New Year’s Eve, mum and dad Andrea and Andras Szabo and their children were preparing to bring in 2021 when their house on the town’s Bain Avenue suddenly shook following a “big bang” outside.
When they went to see what happened, they found a car had collided with a van parked in their driveway and Mrs Szabo’s parked car, which was sent rolling along the road.
All three vehicles were severely damaged, and the van, which Mr Szabo needs for work, was struck with such force that it smashed into the family home.
The dramatic scene was captured on a neighbour’s security camera.
The footage shows a car travelling along the road, before mounting the kerb and striking the two other vehicles and coming to a stop after hitting a lamppost.
Mrs Szabo’s car moved a distance backwards along the road and its alarm activated.
Police have confirmed that a man has been arrested in connection to the incident.
Mrs Szabo’s brother, Sean Donnelly, said: “All of a sudden there was a big bang and the house shook and everyone thought ‘Oh no, what was that?’.
“It turns out a driver had hit the van that was parked in the drive and the car, completely writing them off.
“The van moved from pointing in to the drive, to completely across the front of the house with the engine basically demolished.
“My sister’s car was shunted around 50 metres (160ft) along the road and the whole front end of that is demolished, so there has been a fair bit of damage.”
Mr Donnelly said residents on the street had been planning to raise a glass at midnight, and so the crash could have had much more severe consequences.
He continued: “It was just before 11.30pm it happened, right before the bells.
“When the van was hit and moved, the van hit the house too, and made a crack in the wall of the house. That’s what made the house shake.
“There were quite a lot of police and the road was closed. There was oil and fuel everywhere and the lamppost outside was left at an angle too.
“Everybody is a bit shocked. We managed to get the footage of it from a neighbour’s security camera.
A police spokeswoman said: “Around 11.25pm on Thursday, 31 December, 2020, police received a report of a road crash in Bain Avenue, Elgin, involving a car striking two stationary vehicles.
“Officers attended and a 59-year-old man was arrested in connection with the incident.”
