Metro tube line travellers and pedestrians could not believe their eyes when a woman driver turned onto the line in Vila Nova de Gaia and continued on for 500 metres, crossing a bridge and only stopping at the entrance of the tunnel connecting to São Bento station.
As train circulation was stopped both ways for 40 minutes while the woman’s VW Polo was removed, the 67-year-old told people she had been thinking of other things.
Porto Metro spokesman Jorge Morgado came to her aid, saying the stretch that baffled the woman into thinking she was on a road was “flat”.
“It has rails,” for the trains, he told reporters, but “the ground is regular. It only becomes irregular at the entrance to the tunnel. And that is where the car stopped”.
The driver then did her best to back-track fast, but her car blew a tyre, which meant a breakdown truck had to be called.
Despite Morgado’s support of the woman’s explanation, the local PSP is understood to have booked her for “disobedience of signals”.
