D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton says she is taking action to improve her parking skills after a video that went viral showed her desperately struggling, and ultimately failing, to appropriately park her car outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Ms. Holmes Norton told a local Fox affiliate that she was late for a television interview when she was captured on video by Roll Call reporters. The 77-year-old Democrat said she was parking in an area where she doesn’t normally park and wasn’t expecting construction or the six-point turn she would need to execute in order to park, Fox 5 reported.
In the video, shot along New Jersey Avenue Southeast, Ms. Holmes Norton is seen trying to pull her silver, four-door sedan straight in between two other cars that are parked at an angle. By the time she gets out of the car, she is parked almost perpendicularly to the other vehicles, and according to the video’s narrators, the delegate “repeatedly” hit the red SUV on her left.
“If she parks like that, she should not be a member of Congress anymore,” one of the narrators says in the video.
Benjamin Fritsch, Ms. Holmes Norton’s communications director, told The Hill that she didn’t do any damage to the cars immediately surrounding her and that no damage was reported to police.
Ms. Holmes Norton told Fox 5: “Don’t worry! I have signed up for parking lessons, and I’m even thinking about upgrading to one of those self-parking cars.”
The Hill notes that in June of last year, Ms. Holmes Norton got behind the wheel of a driverless Cadillac and hit the kill switch, designed to stop the car in an emergency, and rendered the vehicle unable to function.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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