5 Weird Things That Caused Car Crashes

While distracted driving is often cited as one of the most common causes of motor vehicle accidents, in the odd car incidents below, the drivers gave much more unusual reasons as to why they crashed their vehicles:

1. Sneeze: A violent sneeze can often cause you to close your eyes for a second, not something you want to do while rounding a sharp bend in the road. And tragically, that seemed to be what happened to a 79-year-old Australian woman who passed away after a sneeze caused her to lose control of her vehicle.
2. Moose: This is just bad luck. While driving down a country road, a Norwegian man swerved his car in order to avoid hitting a moose in the road and ended up ... hitting a bear.

3. Mom: Stealing a car is likely a nerve-wracking experience, especially when you're just 13 years old. Now imagine seeing your mom in the opposite lane while you're driving a stolen Toyota Camry. Apparently, that was all it took to make a New Jersey teen crash the ripped-off vehicle into a tree.
4. Spider: Swatting a spider is not a good enough reason to let go of a steering wheel on a highway, as one 17-year-old girl in Kansas learned. Eleven people were taken to the hospital after her car crossed the center line and slammed into a Jeep head-on.
5. Eclipse: A San Francisco woman blamed the moon moving in front of the sun as the reason she didn't see two pedestrians walking in front of her car. The 26-year-claimed she had been blinded by the eclipse's glare when she plowed into a mother and daughter crossing the street.

Click through to read about a Labrador retriever that was blamed for crashing a tractor-trailer. (More car crash stories.)