[TML] Joel brings the New Year in with a bang!

[Tom Cusworth]

Glad to hear you survived, Joel! I hate to think of what might have happened
if you'd been driving a less robust vehicle...

Well, you might be out of pocket with respect to the car, but you are alive,
which is something we are all (I'm sure) glad to hear. Take it easy and
Michael's seatbelt advice is well worth heeding!

Take Care,

Tom

On 04/01/2008, traveller at dhimaging.com.au <traveller at dhimaging.com.au>
wrote:
>
> Well, where to begin.
>
> I left the house 30-Dec to get some groceries stocked up for New Years Eve
> and New Years Day.
>
> On the way back with a car full of groceries and some pizza for tea, the
> sun
> was very low and brightly glaring in my windscreen.  I came up on a sharp
> curve and standing in the middle of the road (but slightly in my lane of
> traffic) was a giant 'roo.
>
> I swerved to my left to avoid hitting it, but my left tyres went off the
> bitumen (pavement) and I started losing control.   I then started steering
> to the right to compensate and I tried to apply the clutch to let the car
> slow down (rather than slamming the brakes on).
>
> Good plan, but the car only sped up!  Little did I know that in my excited
> state, I was actually applying full throttle to the accelerator rather
> than
> applying the clutch.
>
> Sigh.
>
> At one point, I was sliding backwards down my lane of traffic, slowly
> spinning.  When I saw the edge of the road and the trees growing up from
> it,
> I knew it was bad.  Then the Jeep hit (something), the view out the
> windscreen tilted (hard), and I remember being ejected through either the
> passenger side window or the removable hard top.  I'm still not sure which
> one, but the amount of glass they plucked out of my head makes me think it
> was the window.
>
> I lost consciousness and when I woke up, I was lying on the hardtop, the
> Jeep was on its side with the motor still running, and someone was telling
> me "it's going to be okay, but for GOD'S sake - DON'T MOVE!".
>
> A few days in Hospital (they were worried about the loss of consciousness,
> the cuts on my head, and the massively large bruises all over my abdomen
> and
> thighs), and they finally let me out.
>
> The Jeep is a write-off (the frame is wrecked.  The wrecker operator says
> the frame on a Jeep Wrangler is a very heavy duty type and for it to be
> twisted and warped as bad as it was, it must have been a pretty bad
> accident) - I have some car yards preparing quotes to buy what's left off
> of
> me (for parts).  I had recently fallen on hard times and the car did not
> have insurance.
>
> I've secured financing for another vehicle (2nd hand, but in great shape
> and
> with a 3-year bumper-to-bumper warranty) and I just drove it to the house
> about an hour ago.  I went VERY slowly and when I went past the place I
> wrecked the Jeep, I was amazed.  If I had gone off the other side of the
> road, there was a 20-meter fall-off and it was wall-to-wall pine
> trees.  No
> way would I have survived.  And to be honest, everyone keeps telling me
> that
> normally if a person is ejected from a vehicle when it's involved in a
> very
> bad accident, they don't survive to talk about it.
>
> =sigh=
>
> So, what did I miss?
>
> -Joel
>
>
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-- 
Blessed are the cheapskates, for they shall see god and still have change of
a fiver - Tom Holt, Valhalla.

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