In September of 2009, I wrote a post about the types of headlines the media agencies use to report cars crashing into buildings. Two years later, this method of journalism continues with this story about an automobile accident a Roseville DMV office.
The Roseville field office of the Department of Motor Vehicles is expected to be closed for repairs the rest of this week – after a driving school student crashed into the building and put a 5-foot hole in the wall.
What I found interesting was the Google News results for this accident. This wasn’t a case of the same story being spread across the wire.
“Student driver crashes into DMV office” – “Student driver plows into DMV” – “Hit-And-Run Driver Swipes Calif. DMV”
The hit-and-run angle was not widely reported. Adds quite a twist, I’d say. Most of the information gaps are due to the “get it up as soon as possible” aspect of today’s journalism.
Authorities in Roseville learned of the accident from a local news channel following a viewer tip sent by email. By the time police showed up the vehicle was gone. DMV officials believe the car belonged to a driving school and that a student was likely operating the vehicle.
Late last night, a news10.net story even had a little punch line at the end of the story (I didn’t get a chance to screen grab it!) that went something like “…no word on whether the student passed the test or not.”
They’ll be here all week.
The Sac Rag 
Maybe a local driving school is teaching people that you are SUPPOSED to hit buildings?
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Remember when student driver cars used to have a “oh sh*t” brake pedal for the instructor (sometimes a 2nd steering wheel too)?
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I saw the news10 story that night too. I read the last sentence a few times trying to figure out if the “reporter” was trying to be funny or was just stupid. Asked & answered. KCRA had a snippet on their site at the same time and clearly said the incident happened at 7pm. Well, that made the possibility of it happening during a driving test unlikely. Lastly, the SacBee site uses “pilot” as the verb in their coverage. Normal? Does one pilot a car? I think not.
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