Some crashes make you wince. This one made half the internet ask if the car itself had been drinking. A 62-year-old Sydney woman named Elizabeth Bourgeois has pleaded guilty to negligent and drink driving after a dashcam in a nearby vehicle captured her reversing wildly through a Coles supermarket carpark in Turramurra, smashing into five parked cars along the way.
The incident happened on a Saturday afternoon in March, which is exactly the kind of time you do not want someone driving in reverse arcs through a full parking lot. Police allege Bourgeois was roughly five times over the legal breath alcohol limit at the time. Footage shows her tossing what looks like a glass bottle into the carpark garden before climbing into her Lexus SUV and putting it in reverse, seemingly for the last time that day.
What follows is the kind of driving you would expect from a bumper car with a grudge. The SUV swings backward in a tight loop, clips one car, corrects, then backs straight into another. As she tries to sort herself out, she scrapes past three more vehicles while debris scatters across the lot. It is chaotic enough that TikTok users had a field day, with one commenter asking what kind of alcohol was involved and another saying they would not even attempt that kind of driving in a video game.
The clip clearly struck a nerve online, racking up views and a comment section full of disbelief, because footage like this does not need embellishment to be remarkable.
A Close Call Nobody Will Forget
@7newsaustralia A Sydney woman has pleaded guilty to negligent and drink driving after crashing into several cars while more than five times the legal limit. #crash #crime #dashcam #turramurra #sydney ♬ original sound – 7NEWS Australia
The scariest part of this story is not the property damage. New father Joshua Quaife was standing beside his car with his five-week-old daughter Florence when the SUV plowed into it. He had just unclipped her from her seat when he saw the vehicle accelerating toward him. The impact knocked Florence out of her seat since she was not yet buckled back in.
Thankfully, she was not seriously hurt, but Quaife described the moment as deeply shaken, which is understandable given how close things came to going very differently.
How She Was Caught
Officers found Bourgeois nearby in a public toilet and arrested her on the spot.
Between the dashcam footage and the breath test results, there was not much room for argument, which likely explains the guilty plea.
Why This One Went Viral
Part of what makes this video so watchable is how relentless it is. Most drunk driving footage shows a single bad decision.
This one shows several in a row, each worse than the last, all within a few seconds. It is the kind of clip that reminds you why carparks feel more dangerous than actual roads sometimes.
The Bigger Picture
Cases like this tend to resurface every so often, and they always spark the same conversation about accountability and consequences for driving under the influence.
Whatever penalty Bourgeois ultimately receives, the footage itself has already done plenty to make the point.