Sunday morning around 2 a.m., a drunk driver plowed into a Ballard Taco Time, lodging the car halfway through the building’s exterior. The restaurant, located at 2853 NW Market Street, was closed at the time, so nobody was hurt.
This isn’t the first time the Ballard Taco Time has been the subject of intense car crashes. In 2013, a driver’s brakes gave out and slammed into a car in the restaurant’s parking lot. In 2010, three Ballard High School students died after a high speed collision into the Taco Time’s sign pole.
“It has nothing to do with the restaurant itself, it’s just the way the street is,” the Ballard location’s restaurant manager Aaron Alcorn says. “It forks off—seven or eight years ago they changed it so the right lane goes straight and the left lane goes left. It just has to do with people’s awareness coming through here and whether or not they are intoxicated or on drugs.”
Alcorn says it might take a month to completely repair the damage from Sunday’s crash, but hopes to get the dining room area opened in a couple days. In the meantime, the drive through is still open.