Driver feared for his life after getting stuck in car wash

A MAN says he feared for his life when he got stuck in a car wash.

Andrew Huyton, 25, of Park Road, Henley, used the machine at the Park Regatta service station in Reading Road on June 10.

The machine stopped working when it was halfway through the cycle with the brushes stuck between the front and back doors of his Volkswagen Golf.

But when he rang the emergency number listed on the side of the machine, no one picked up.

Mr Huyton, a machine engineer, had to squeeze out of the back door of his car as he couldn’t open the front door in order to go into the shop to ask for help.

He said: “I was hoping the machine didn’t come on again as it would have shut the door and that wouldn’t have been good for me.

“I rang the emergency number but was ignored and no one in the shop came out to help. What’s the point of having an emergency number if no one answers it?

“When I went in to tell them, they looked completely blank and shrugged their shoulders and told me I had to get back in the car. They waited until I had done that and then pressed ‘go’ on the cycle.

“I received zero apology and the car is still as filthy as it was when it went in. I didn’t get any compensation for putting my life at risk when leaving the car. With an automatic machine, you can’t be 100 per cent confident it won’t continue if paused unless you press the emergency stop. It could have started up again at any given moment and caused me serious injury, if not death from crushing if I was halfway out of the car door and it carried on.”

Mr Huyton said he was upset with the “lack of empathy” from the staff. He added: “I couldn’t quite believe they didn’t shut it down and were still serving people immediately afterwards. It is not the correct response, which would have been ‘We need to shut this down for the time being and get this looked at’.”

Ian Cawley, head of operations at Park Garage Group, which runs the station, said: “I apologise that the service offered on this occasion did not live up to the high standards that our customers are used to.

“We have investigated this issue and have taken steps to resolve it. All car wash emergency response systems are in the process of being double checked. Refresher courses on customer service and emergency response protocol are being rolled out to relevant staff members.

“We would like to offer this customer a gesture of goodwill and will seek to make contact with him in due course.

“We are always grateful when situations like this are raised as we can then take steps to resolve them.

“We trust that this isn’t a situation that is likely to reoccur.”