Apparently haywire vehicle saved from creek by guardrail

ANTIGO — A local woman narrowly avoided driving into Spring Brook Friday afternoon after losing control of her vehicle on Gowan Road and ramming directly into the end of a guardrail on a bridge above the waterway.

Saige Corso was driving to work just before 4 p.m. Friday when she said the used 2014 Chevy Equinox she had recently purchased malfunctioned.

“It was a 25 mile per hour zone, so I was going 25 to 30 miles per hour,” Corso said. “I was going along and I have a small touch screen in it. I described it before as glitching, but it was almost like it was pushing buttons by itself. It’s never done that before. I was like, ‘Whatever. It’s not that big of a deal.’ Right before I got to the bridge, it veered off and I hit the very front of the bridge head-on.”

Corso was transported to Aspirus Langlade Hospital following the crash.

“I have bruised ribs and I haven’t been to work in the last three days because I can barely lay down. It hurts to breathe at this point. I don’t have any serious injuries, but I was hurt during the accident,” she said.

Antigo Police Chief Dan Duley said the crash could have been worse for Corso, who was cited for failing to maintain control of her vehicle in the incident.

“If she wouldn’t have hit the guardrail, she might have wound up in the river, and then, who knows,” Duley said. “It didn’t happen that way, so that’s a good thing, and that’s why guardrails are there, to hopefully prevent people from going in the rivers or embankments.”

Corso plans to file a lawsuit against the out-of-town used car dealer who sold her the SUV, which she said began exhibiting problems nearly as soon as she bought it.

“I had it three days before it started doing these things,” she said. “I did buy the vehicle as is — there was no type of warranty on it. But I had it three days. It would be different if I had driven 10,000 miles or even 100 miles. But I had driven it only like 60 at that point. I went to work and back maybe twice.

“It just seems kind of fishy. I’m not sure if I have any options or what I should do at this point, but I’m now out of a vehicle. I had insurance on it, so I claimed the accident, but to me, it seems like he sold me a crappy vehicle, and from the reviews that he has, it seems like he’s done this to other people and they just haven’t had it as bad as I have.”

According to Jacob Cross, a DNR Law Enforcement Supervisor for Northern Wisconsin, he and employees manning the DNR spills hotline were notified of the incident by responding law enforcement officers after they noticed fluids leaking from the vehicle into Spring Brook, though to his knowledge, the spillage was minimal.

“It was just your typical cleanup of any vehicle,” Cross said. “There was no DNR response or spills response that was required to clean up or put barriers in the river. There wasn’t any fish kill or anything like that that I was notified of. It wasn’t significant enough to require a response from our spill staff. From my understanding, talking to the spill staff, it wasn’t like a gas tank with 29 gallons of gas flowed into the river — that would be a different thing. But this was just the coolants and stuff. They hold probably less than five gallons.”

Wisconsin DNR Northern Spill Coordinator Jeff Paddock confirmed this, saying all that likely went into the water was an unrecoverably small quantity of fluids like motor oil and antifreeze, and that there is no residual contamination.

“Per state law, if gasoline is spilled over a gallon, it needs to be reported,” Paddock said. “If any other petroleum product over five gallons is spilled, that needs to be reported to the spills hotline. And then any potential impacts to surface water need to be reported. Any spill needs to be cleaned up, but the statutes also say ‘to the extent practicable.’ So if there is an impact to surface water — say, for instance, if there’s a sheen — people do what they can to clean that up, but if there is a small amount of petroleum that does impact the surface water, again, it’s the extent practicable for recovery.”

Corso described herself as being fortunate not to have been more seriously injured.

“If I would have lost control any sooner, I would have gone into the water in the creek,” she said. “It 100 percent could have definitely been worse. It could have been worse in that I could have lost my life if that was the case — anything could have happened. The way I think about it, I was only going 30 miles per hour, but most of the roads are 55. So if I was going 60 miles per hour and lost control, then what? That’s something that I think about a lot. I could have been hurt way worse than what I was.”