Watch Valet Attendant Take Joyride in New Corvette
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Bill Pugliano/Getty Images(COSTA MESA, Calif.) — Car owners may have second thoughts about dropping their rides off with the valet after seeing one new video.
Dan Cowles left his new Chevrolet Corvette Stingray with a valet when he and his wife, Sandy, went to see a concert in Costa Mesa, California, Sunday.
The attendant decided to go on a dangerously fast joyride inside the garage without realizing that Cowles had activated the car’s “valet mode.”
The special setting locks the glove box and certain systems within the car while also activating a forward-facing camera that records what the valet is doing.
Cowles didn’t see the footage until he went home after the concert.
“The first thing I saw was that he went 50 mph, he went 0 to 50, which is pretty obvious what he was doing,” Cowles told ABC News. “When he parked the car into the stall, he went out of the car and looked at the front end of the car … I was concerned about damage about the front of the car, but fortunately there was no damage.”
Cowles said he was in “disbelief.”
“You hear stories about valet, you see things in the past and you hope that’s an exception and not the norm,” he said.
Cowles then contacted the valet company owner, who initially took issue with the video.
“The owner called me up yesterday, the first thing he said he spoke to his attorney and told me the video was illegal,” Cowles told ABC. “I think my impression was the owner didn’t realize the video was built into the car. I informed him this was standard of Corvettes and that as long as audio isn’t recorded in California it’s not illegal; he didn’t realize that.”
The owner also said he fired the driver, according to Cowles, and while Cowles was “disappointed” at first, he decided the firing was just because of the driver’s irresponsible actions.
“It made me think twice about using valet,” Cowles said.
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