National Clothesline

Don’t make any jokes about adding a drive-thru window to his Arizona drycleaning plant. David Reddish has already heard them all.

And don’t ask if his store is “wide open” for business, either.

Since October of 2007, three different customers have accidentally driven their automobiles through the wall of his Phoenix-based business.

“The miracle of it all is that the three incidents all occurred during busy times of day and nobody was hurt,” Reddish said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

That almost wasn’t the case during the most recent accident, which happened on Nov. 28.

“It was quiet on Saturday morning,” Reddish recalled. “All of a sudden at 8:45 a.m. it sounded like a bomb went off. I turned around and there’s the front bumper of a car about six inches from my chair.”

The incident was caught on one of Reddish’s surveillance cameras. The footage shows him slump into his chair and put his head into his hands shortly after.

“Outside of jumping out of my skin when I heard it happen, you can imagine the thought in my head: This cannot be happening again. This is unreal,” he said.

Meanwhile, the 22-year-old woman whose foot slipped on the gas pedal, was frightened to tears. Yet, even that did not stop her from dropping off her clothes to be drycleaned.

As for Reddish, once the shock wore off, he simply thought to himself, “Here we go again.”

The first accident occurred back in October of 2007 when a car violently slammed into the front lobby and narrowly missed an elderly customer by about a foot.

Then, almost exactly one year later, another vehicle smashed into the building while Reddish was home with his son.

“My manager called and told me. I thought he was pulling my leg,” he laughed.

Fortunately, Reddish was insured properly because the repairs in all three collisions cost approximately $10,000 apiece.

Incidentally, the same technician, “Gabe,” has performed the work each time.

“He told me, ‘Next year, you have to invite me over for Thanksgiving,’” Reddish said.

Hopefully, the two will not have to meet at Regal Cleaners again next Fall.

Reddish, a former geologist who has owned the cleaning business for over 13 years now, has given a lot of thought about why the accidents keep happening.

“In our parking lot, the slots coming to the front of the store are at a slight incline and I just wonder if drivers think they have to use the accelerator a little bit to get up the slot,” he said. “But, each time the explanation has been the same, that their foot slipped off the brake, hit the gas and the next thing you know we’re having a close encounter.”

As a safety precaution, Reddish took preventative steps after the second incident to make sure it didn’t happen again.

“I spoke with the property owner about it and we had curb stops put in the parking slots in front of the store,” he said. “I also asked about having bollards — you know, the concrete posts — put in and he was reluctant to do that for probably a) cost and b) aesthetics.”

After the third accident, Reddish has decided to petition again for the bollards. This time, he sent the request in along with a video of a news story that appeared as a lead story on Phoenix’s local Fox affiliate.

Since then, the story has exploded in popularity and has been covered by numerous media outlets. In fact, Reddish was on CBS’s The Early Show in a live telephone interview.

“I’ve been told that there have been at least four contractors out already who have seen the news or have contacted the property owner about getting those [bollards] put in. I think he’ll have a hard time saying no this time,” he said.