SAUGUS, Mass. — Surveillance cameras captured a driver drifting into oncoming traffic and smashing into two cars in Saugus.
The crash happened just after 1:30 p.m. on Monday, and home surveillance video shows the driver, Saugus resident Jeffrey Farren crossed the center line and slammed into an oncoming SUV.
Farren then hit a parked pickup truck, before finally coming to a stop.
Police say Farren was drunk, and arrested him on scene.
They also say this was the 16th crash since January on Essex Street, and many of them happen on the same curve. One of the crashes back in MAy turned out to be deadly, when a woman hit an MBTA bus and was killed.
"I hear this crash like something from a movie," Efrain Lopez said after hearing the impact.
Lopez's grandchildren saw the whole incident as they were getting into his car parked on Essex Street.
Farren's car whizzed by just feet away from them.
"One of them cried for about 15 minutes,' Lopez said. "I had to take her inside and calm her down because she was very afraid."
One man in the area is fed up with the situation, and he has taken it upon himself to document every crash.
Al Dinardo lives on the stretch where the crash happened, and owns the surveillance camera that caught it all. His cameras also caught the deadly crash from May.
"I put up a whole system. you know because we've had a lot of accidents and stuff," Dinardo said. "We noticed a major increase in traffic since I lived there in 20 years.
Dinardo said he thinks part of the problem is drivers taking shortcuts off of Route 1, and said the advent of apps that plan routes to avoid traffic by taking side roads has made it worse.
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Now, Dinardo and his neighbors are trying to figure out what, if anything, they can do to make their street safer for everyone.
"Someone has to do something about it, because we don't know what to do," Dinardo said.
Cox Media Group
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