What happened with tom and ventura? What is ironic about this incident?

Tom got into an accident right after his honeynoon, the other passenger suffered a broken arm. Ironically, the passenger was not his wife. It was a maid from the Santa Barbara Hotel.

A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too because her arm was broken--she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.