Re: [humble][death to a M3 tonight]

[Jason <jason@scirocco.org>]

At 10:40 AM 10/20/98 , Neal Tovsen wrote:
>
>I had almost the IDENTICAL thing happen to me a couple of years ago. It
>was winter here in lovely Minnesota, and I was in the back seat of my

<snip>

Funny.  I had almost the INDENTICAL thing happen to me!! Just one little
difference... I was in the passenger seat of the car which flipped over,
which, in this case, was a Plymouth Sundance rental car.

Oh, and there is another difference, the two people who were driving
towards us and saw us just kept driving to the nearest house because they
assumed we were dead anyways.

We were in the rental because we had totalled my friend's S-10 3 weeks
earlier when a drunk driver pulled out in front of us at 80mph... The crash
was estimated to have happened at a 60mph speed differential- so we were
probably going 75 (she had about 0 time to the brakes), and he was going
about 15.  Well, this isn't the story, but when S-10 hit Ford Tempo, the
results were not pretty.  Put there were no serious injuries- just lots of
contusions, cuts, seatbelt bruises, and concussions.  Oh yeah, and one arrest.

Anyways, so it's 3 weeks later, and my friend is bitching that she misses
her S10, cause this Sundance is such a shitbox and probably wouldn't do
100.  I tell her yes it would, and she decides to try it.  Long story
short, I was right.  Just as we hit 105 on this country road, I see a sign
for a left turn, marked 40.  Scream "SHIT! WATCH THE TURN", she lifts
throttle abruptly, unsettling the rear end, and then makes the mistake of
hitting the brakes.  Bye Bye.  

Car oversteers, she corrects left, then right, then left, but we drive
straight off the road.  About to merge with us, about 4 feet below, is a
service road.  We dropped off, and hit that road somewhere between 45' and
head-on vertically, setting off her airbag and ripping the transmission
completely out of the car.  Then, we flipped over back-over-front, landed
on the trunk, and then flew off the 13-foot embankment on the other side of
the road, into a field.  We landed on 4 wheels, then flipped over 5 1/2
more times until we came to rest on the roof about 100 feet from the road.  

I never lost consciousness, although I was a bit dazed, but slid out of the
car through the hatch that had swung open.  She regained consciousness as I
was clibing back in to get her, once I realized that the hissing noise I
heard wasn't a fire, but one of the tires.

She was largely uninjured, but was in shock for several hours.  Concussion
and seatbelt bruises.  Me, I got smacked in the face with the 5-lb bag of
ice we had in the car, badly bruising my cornea, and wound up with 2 torn
paraspinal muscles, seatbelt welts, some minor burns from her airbag, and a
herniated disc in my neck.

...and a tremendous attitude adjustment about speed.  I had just moved back
from Germany, and was very "whatever" about speed.  There's a time and
place... and there are drivers and vehicles who can handle it, and those
which can not.  An experienced driver should not be driving a rental
Sundance at speeds over 100 mph on winding country roads s/he is not
familiar with.

But bravo to Shawn... you did the right thing.  I wish I didn't have to
walk 1/8 of a mile to call an ambulance for myself after going through
something like that...

And be careful out there, guys.


	Jason


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