A DUBLIN WOMAN has told a judge that her Hertz rent-a-car went wandering off on its own in heavy traffic, injuring her when it crashed into two other cars.

Monica Shehata Powers told her barrister Conor Kearney she was helpless to do anything after hearing a snapping sound before the car veered into parked vehicles.

Powers, a UX designer of New Pembroke Street North, Ballsbridge, Dublin, said she had driven only a few kilometres from Hertz’s Dublin depot when the double collision occurred on Shelbourne Road.

Judge Paula Murphy heard Powers had injured her foot, which had become caught under the brake pedal as she attempted to stop the runaway vehicle.

She claimed she had been unable to attend her office for two weeks and felt her absence had put a strain on her relationship with management and affected her negatively when going for a promotion.

Forensic motor engineer Noel Maher, a former inspector with the national car test service, told the court the steering tie rod had snapped, leaving Powers’s car uncontrollable.

He said that when he attended the hire company’s headquarters in Co Wexford to inspect the car, they had refused to give him the vehicle’s service history.

He had discovered the tie rod had broken and that the car had been involved in a previous accident without what he believed should have been a detailed follow-up service.

Maher, of Automotive Technical Expert Consultant Engineers and Assessors, told Judge Murphy the steering track rod could have been damaged in a previous accident or if a front wheel had collided with a kerb.

“The car would have been used by different people who hired it out,” he said.

“I believe it may have been involved in a number of accidents and one area of damage to the car’s off-side had not been recorded.”

Hertz had denied liability in the case and had blamed Powers for having caused the accident herself. Its expert engineer claimed if the track rod had been distorted prior to the crash, the car would have been very difficult to drive.

Judge Murphy, awarding Powers €21,000 damages, said she had been an experienced driver and evidence that the car had suddenly veered to the left supported her evidence of what had happened.

She told Kearney, who appeared with Tracey Solicitors, that the car had multiple previous users and an earlier impact.