A car crashed into a car wash near Baltimore on Wednesday morning, and it shook the worker and visitors on location. Aside from being traumatizing, it shattered one of the building’s windows and shook the structure so hard that workers first thought it was an earthquake. The driver ended up hurt, though no one else was. The business closed for the rest of the day.
Police were called to the Halethorpe Auto Spa Express on Washington Boulevard around 11 a.m., The Baltimore Banner reported. According to a Baltimore County Police spokesperson, the elderly driver was the only person injured. The extent of those injuries wasn’t immediately clear. The workers inside were shaken up but unhurt.
Inside, the crash had left something of a mess. One of the car wash’s windows was simply gone, and staff spent the afternoon roping off the area and sweeping up all the broken glass. A manager said the whole building shook on impact, which is why people thought an earthquake had occurred. The wash closed for the day, though the self-serve vacuums stayed open. Managers hoped to reopen on Thursday.
The car wash sits on the corner of a busy four-lane road, directly across from a shopping center, a parking garage, and a Walmart. A spot like that sees a steady stream of cars pulling in and out all day. As of Wednesday afternoon, police had not said what caused the driver to hit the building.
How Often Do Cars Crash Into Buildings Like This?
Vehicle crashes into Halethorpe car wash, driver hurt and business closed for the day https://t.co/49zFCqJqDb
— The Baltimore Banner (@BaltimoreBanner) June 24, 2026
It happens far more than the average person realizes. The Storefront Safety Council, which tracks these incidents, estimates that vehicles crash into buildings more than 100 times a day in the United States. Many of those are minor, but a large share cause injuries, and some are fatal. Convenience stores, restaurants, and other roadside businesses get hit the most.
The causes are usually mundane. Pedal error, where a driver hits the gas instead of the brake, is one of the most common, along with medical episodes and simple loss of control. Older drivers turn up in a meaningful share of these crashes, though they happen to people of every age. In this case, police haven’t said what went wrong, only that the driver was hurt.
What Happens to the Business?
For a business, a crash like this is more disruptive than it looks. There’s the obvious damage, a shattered window and a spray of broken glass, but also the lost day of revenue while everything gets cleaned up and made safe. The car wash closed for the day, kept its vacuums running, and aimed to be back open within 24 hours. Not every business gets off that lightly.
Safety experts say a lot of these crashes are preventable. The most common fix is the humble bollard, the sturdy metal or concrete post you see planted in front of store entrances and gas pumps, which can stop a vehicle before it reaches the wall. Plenty of businesses skip them until something like this happens. For this car wash, the lesson arrived the hard way, with a missing window and a driver who needed help.