Ride the Ducks vehicle collides with car in Seattle

SEATTLE – A Ride the Ducks vehicle and a car crashed in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne, the first reported collision involving one of the amphibious vehicles since September’s deadly collision on the Aurora Bridge.

No one was injured in Thursday’s crash on southbound Fifth Avenue North at Mercer Street shortly before 3:15 p.m., authorities said.

Police said the car, a Toyota Camry, and the Ride the Ducks vehicle both tried making a left turn onto Fifth Avenue from separate lanes when they collided.

Annie Alley, a representative of the public relations firm representing Seattle Ride the Ducks, said in a statement police did not cite the tourist vehicle’s driver as the source of the crash.

“All mechanical systems on the Duck operated normally, allowing it to stop quickly and avoid injury,” she wrote.

Crews partially blocked westbound Mercer Street at Fifth Avenue North for about an hour to investigate, the Seattle Department of Transportation said.

Since September’s fatal wreck, Ride the Ducks has been under heavy scrutiny from state and city officials.

The company’s vehicles returned to Seattle streets earlier this year after the state suspended operations pending a full investigation of the company’s fleet. The crash killed five people and injured dozens more.

Representatives of the company have said it has taken or intends to take a number of steps to boost safety since the Sept. 24 crash, such as adding a second crew member on the tours, allowing drivers to focus on the road and installing new cameras on the vehicles to aid drivers’ views.

Earlier this month, Ride the Ducks of Seattle admitted to 463 safety violations and agreed to pay $222,000 in penalties to settle a pending state complaint stemming from the accident. Also, three of the survivors said recently they want to hold the city and state partly responsible for the accident.

In October, another survivor, a 21-year-old Korean student, sued two Ride the Ducks companies over the crash.