Cop car left hanging after driver confuses brake and gas pedal

Around the port in Barcelona, it’s not unusual to see National Police vehicles on patrol. But it’s not quite so normal to see one of these cars lying face first in the sea, as happened this weekend. As can be seen from the above photo, one of the police cars that are usually used for border patrols ended up face first in the water on Saturday.

The two occupants of the car were carrying out routine tasks when the incident occurred. The car was a relatively new model and, unusually for Spain, had an automatic transmission, with which the officers were not familiar. When the car approached the breakwater to get a better view of the seafront, “the driver confused the brake with the gas pedal,” a police spokesperson explained, sending the car plunging over the edge.

The vehicle was left half-submerged until a crane eventually managed to pull it out of the waters. The police officers were unhurt thanks to the fact that they went off the edge where the breakwater was. “In another place they could have fallen into the sea, and we’d be talking about much worse consequences,” added the same spokesperson.