Car accidents, the sublime to the ridiculous

Flicking through the papers this morning I came across a news story that initially amused me, but then, with a return of conscience, left me rather appalled.

A man in America, it appears, was arrested by the police after smashing his SUV into a tree near Hyndman, Pennsylvania. That in itself is nothing new; I'm sure Americans crashing vastly oversized vehicles into trees is a fairly regular occurrence.

But it was what the officers discovered inside the car that sent the incident spiralling into the pages of newspapers throughout the world.

In addition to a beer cooler packed with nearly 30 cans of Budweiser, traffic cops discovered a four- year-old boy. Once again, nothing odd there. The roads of the good old US of A are undoubtedly full of whippersnappers being ferried from kindergarten to Little League, although admittedly the King of Beers is not normally hitching a lift too.

On this occasion, however, things were a little out of the ordinary. The four-year-old wasn't, as one would expect, strapped into a seat in the back of the car but was instead sat astride his father's lap, the steering wheel in his hand and a rather bemused look on his cheeky little face.

Apparently, the 33-year-old father later confided in a paramedic the reason for the car accident, saying, "The boy steered too far to one side and struck a tree."

I'm sorry, what? The four-year-old boy steered too far to one side and hit a tree?

Oh, silly him. Surely he should have realised, perched up there on his dad's knee, barely able to see over the dashboard, that his steering was a little erratic and that if he wasn't careful he was going to collide with the foliage racing past the window.

But little Johnny, or whatever his name was, obviously wasn't paying attention. Did he not listen during his driving lessons? It seems not.

Seriously though, what is a man doing allowing his four-year-old son to drive his car? I think maybe, just maybe, the crate of beer had something to do with it. But that's no excuse, it actually makes it worse.

What some drivers do on the road simply beggars belief. How some people managed to survive into adulthood, let alone pass a driving test, is a miracle in itself. But survive they do and they're unleashed onto the roads to pose a very real threat of death and serious personal injury to drivers all across the world.

So let's have a look at some of those people that really shouldn't have been allowed behind a wheel in the first place and take a peek at the car accidents they caused. The world, as we're about to discover, really is full of nutters.

We'll begin with an incident that occurred in America back in the mid-90s. One hot summer day traffic cops were patrolling the quiet roads through the deserts of Arizona when they came across a pile of twisted, smouldering wreckage embedded three feet deep into the side of a cliff. It initially looked like a plane had smashed into the rock but lab boffins soon worked out that it wasn't a plane at all - it was the remains of a car.

How a car ended up 125 feet off the ground, stuck into the side of a cliff was initially something of a mystery but an investigation eventually discovered the reasons for the bizarre discovery.

It seems that an ex-air force sergeant had somehow got hold a rocket pack that was designed to give heavy transport planes a bit of an extra boost when taking off and had decided to strap it to his car.

Maybe he had a death wish or maybe he just didn't think that such behaviour would result in a car accident, but whatever the reason was we shall never know; the unfortunate former flyer didn't survive his high-speed adventure to tell the tale. Instead, what was left of him ended up embedded deep within the cliff along with the remains of his rocket-charged 1967 Chevy Impala.

All seemed to go well to start with, or as well as can be expected when you've got an aeroplane rocket pack bolted to your car, and he is believed to have reached speeds of up to 300mph as he tore along the road.

After covering a distance of around 2.6 miles (which took a mind-boggling 15 to 20 seconds) things started to take a turn for the worse. Maybe thinking that 300mph was just a tad too fast and that he wanted to slow down a little, our trusty driver decided to apply the brakes.

The brakes, however, had other ideas and melted instantly. The tyres then shredded and the vehicle took off. Yep, it took off. It started to fly. Literally. It got up to an altitude of 125 feet and carried on, covering a further distance of nearly one and a half miles as it soared through the blue Arizona sky.

But all good things come to an end and unfortunately this car was bound for a sticky wicket. Directly ahead was a cliff. Now this cliff had been standing there for a million years and had no desire to move itself in order to avoid a lunatic in a rocket-propelled car. There was only ever going to be one winner.

Thankfully, car accidents of this type are fairly few and far between and I can't find any other reports of rocket-powered cars colliding with cliffs.

There have, however, been a number of other equally bizarre road accidents, some tragic, some idiotic and some simply laughable.

One of the latter involved a New Zealand teenager called Wayne. Now Wayne discovered that his clapped out old banger was a little low on brake fluid and, like any normal human being, decided to top it up.

But it was Wayne's choice of replacement that was a little worrying. Instead of popping to his local Halfords (or whatever they have in New Zealand), Wayne decided to run into the kitchen and borrow a bottle of his mum's washing-up liquid. He wasn't planning to give his car a wash, oh no, but instead topped up the leaking brake fluid with the sweet-smelling, floral liquid.

It was no surprise then when, speeding around a bend minutes later, Wayne slammed on his brakes only to find the car skid across the road, bounce off a kerb and end up wrapped around a telegraph pole. Surprise, surprise, the brakes hadn't worked. Hmm, I wonder why.

Young Wayne ended up in court charged with dangerous driving as a result of his stupidity and whilst there he was also found guilty of a previous offence of stealing two orange traffic cones. That just about sums it up really; what more can you say about someone who decided to replace his brake fluid with washing-up liquid? Enough said.

Going from the laughable to the moronic, it's worth taking a look at a car accident involving US basketball player Eddie Griffin. But not too close a look mind.

Back in March 2006 the Minnesota Timberwolves centre hit the headlines following an incident involving his SUV, a parked car, an in-car entertainment system and a DVD of a somewhat adult nature.

What exactly happened remains slightly unclear but it is widely believed that the 24-year-old had a few too many drinks to celebrate his team's latest victory and then decided to drive back to his apartment. Whilst making his merry way home his fuddled brain decided it would be a good idea to turn on the DVD player that was mounted on his dashboard. Bad plan.

But it was his choice of movie that made the situation worse. It wasn't Smokey and the Bandit or Days of Thunder or any other good old driving film, but instead his flick of preference happened to be an x-rated production featuring a number of nubile young ladies cavorting with a gentleman of a fairly well-endowed disposition.

With such antics happening on the screen in front of him it's no surprise that Griffin wasn't paying full attention to the road ahead. For reasons that have no need of explanation, the basketball player was only using one hand to steer his gas-guzzling SUV and it wasn't long before he smashed into a parked Chevy.

Locals ran to the scene of the car accident and found a drunk man staggering in the road while attempting to correct his embarrassing state of undress. He even admitted to some that he had been engaged in activities of an unsuitable nature and then offered to buy the owner of the vehicle he had crashed into a replacement.

Not surprisingly, concerned eyewitnesses called the authorities and the inebriated Griffin was carted off in a police car. Amazingly, however, he was not breathalysed or arrested but taken straight home to bed by the officers.

They are currently under investigation for failing to charge the star and the official line remains that Mr Griffin had crashed after dropping his mobile phone. I guess it helps being a celebrity.

Last, but by no means least, we'll take a look at a tragic road accident; one that almost claimed the life of a popular British singer. A bizarre car accident but a tragic one nevertheless.

Brian Harvey was a member of East 17, one of the biggest boy bands of the 1990s who had 16 top 30 hits before their split in 1997. Life after the band wasn't so good to Brian and he divorced his wife, fighting a bitter custody battle over his young daughter, was prosecuted but later cleared of supplying cocaine and then suffered serious personal injuries in a crazed machete attack.

On top of all that his grandmother died, his new girlfriend announced she was leaving him, he went bankrupt and then, not surprisingly, he tried to kill himself - twice. He failed both times.

It looked like things couldn't get any worse for the former superstar but somehow they did. A car accident in an East London cul-de-sac left him fighting for his life in hospital with horrific injuries including a smashed pelvis, broken ribs and punctured lungs.

The singer had somehow run himself over by his own Mercedes but initial reports of the road accident were sketchy and there was some confusion about how the incident actually occurred. It wasn't until Harvey woke up three weeks later in intensive care that he was able to reveal exactly what had happened that night.

It all started with a severe case of the munchies which Brian decided to alleviate with a meal of baked potatoes. But he didn't want one just one potato, nor even two, instead scoffing down a plate of three giant hot potatoes.

Talking of the feast, he said, "I was starving so I baked three jacket potatoes and stuffed them down. They were big. I put cheese on, then tuna mayonnaise and I ate the lot."

Next deciding it was time to go and visit the nearby house of a friend, Harvey hopped into the driving seat of his shiny Mercedes and roared off down the road. On the way, however, he got lost in a tight cul-de-sac.

Telling what happened next, Brian said, "There wasn't much room to turn around, so I came to a stop and put the car in reverse.

"But then I felt sick so I took off my seatbelt, opened the door and went to be sick. Instead of keeping my foot on the brake, it slipped on to the accelerator."

It seems Mr Harvey's giant potato meal had come back to haunt him and, as he disgorged out of the door, the car careered into a parked vehicle, tossing him out onto the road. He became trapped under the wheels and the car proceeded to roll on top of him, crushing his body.

Revealing the details of the car accident, Brian said, "The car went over my stomach and pushed it up into my lungs, both lungs completely deflated, my diaphragm was ripped and my pelvis was smashed in seven places."

He eventually made a full recovery but his personal injuries truly were horrific and it's amazing to think that a man can actually be run over by his own car whilst being sick.

But if police officers can discover four-year-olds driving cars, teenagers replacing brake fluid with washing-up liquid, rocket-powered cars embedded in cliffs and drunken basketball players getting excited by x-rated movies as they drive along, then it probably isn't that amazing after all.

Author: Simon Jacobs - www.car-accident-claim.com

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