Video shows aftermath of car crash caused by rogue cicada
This is one buzzworthy police video.
Cops in Cincinnati released bodycam footage Thursday showing a driver who totaled his Chevrolet Cruze when a “pesky” cicada flew into his face while he was on the road Monday.
“I made a split-second reaction and just ended up totaling the car,” a dejected Vincent Bingham, 20, told The Post on Thursday.
Police posted footage of the aftermath on Facebook, cracking, “The story of a cicada that caused a driver to crash on Riverside Dr. earlier in the week has been all the buzz both here locally and nationally! The pesky insects aren’t just loud, they have proven to be dangerous!”
The 52-second clip begins with Bingham, sitting on a curb as police and fire officials survey the crash scene and cicadas feverishly flutter in the background.
“You all right, man?” one first responder asks Bingham. “What happened?”
“I was driving and I’m guessing it was a cicada that flew in and smacked me right in the face,” Bingham said. “And when that happened I, you know, reacted.”
Stunned by the freak encounter, Bingham smashed his car into a nearby utility pole. His ride was wrecked, but cops said his seatbelt and the vehicle’s airbags saved him from serious injuries.
Another driver who said he was behind Bingham about a quarter-mile before the crash said the startled man wasn’t speeding or swerving beforehand.
“No, he wasn’t speeding or anything,” the witness recalled. “It’s just, like, all of a sudden he went to the right and caught that pole.”
The responding officer said he was “tempted to believe” Bingham’s story since he had a cicada stuck in the console of his police cruiser, prompting the witness to say he previously found one of the large insects in his car as well.
Bingham, of New Richmond, is now trying to raise money for a new set of wheels. He had full insurance on the leased 2017 Cruze he got in October, but “that’s not going to get me another car,” he told The Post while recalling the wreck.
“I had my windows down — I didn’t have A/C — and a cicada just came out of nowhere and hit me right in the face,” Bingham said during a phone interview.
Bingham, who works as a truck driver for a waste management company, said the lack of wheels forced him to take Thursday off.
“They still want me to come in later,” he said of his employer. “I don’t know, I have a lot going on.”
Bingham’s fundraiser, meanwhile, had garnered just $60 as of Thursday.
“My car got totaled and actually ended up wrecking into a steel pole because a cicada flew in my driver window and hit me in the face and made me lose control of the car,” the website reads. “Any help I can get I’m [grateful] for. Thank you.”
