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Originally Posted by Fixer
All Bets: I can imagine you are thanking your lucky stars. Your description was pretty scary. What makes it scarier was that it was up to fate that you didn't get hit. Mainly because there wasn't any part of the equation you could have affected directly.
And I believe in lucky stars. I had one once. 1980. Washington's birthday weekend. I was at Air Force technical training in Denver and my best friend and I decided to visit his parents in Texas for the long weekend. My friend, Jeff, had a Dodge 'Lil Red Express' pickup. Pickup with a big ass motor and fancy chrome trim - like a totally useless roll bar. We're driving through Colorado at about 2 a.m. because our class got out at midnight. Jeff, to keep awake, would every once in while speed way to about 95 then slow back down to around 65. February + nightime = black ice. We hit a patch during one of those 95 mph dashes. Jeff was drinking coffee so steering with only 1 hand. Neither of us had seat belts on. It wasn't the "in" thing back then. Truck went sidewides and slide toward the median. We hit that and launched. Police report said we did 4 barrel rolls and 2 end over ends. I wasn't counting. After the world stopping flipping and spinning, the truck was upside down on top of me in the opposite lanes of the interstate. I'm laying flat on the road and the hood has me pinned. My nose got mashed and I had some blood in my eyes. Not strong enough to push anything off me. One foot was someone wedged between the engine and firewall. Can't hear my friend. Bystanders stopped and jacked up the hood and bit and I crawled out. Walking but limping. Felt myself all over. No bones broken as far as I could tell. No gashed arteries, no major bleeding but my ankle hurt like hell. Cops and EMS arrived about 20 minutes later - way out on the interstate and not close to anything. They had to search for my friend Jeff. He was eventually found 45 minutes after the accident. He had been thrown so far from the truck that we couldn't find him near the road. Jeff had struck a fence post and was on the opposite side of an earth berm. They took us both to the closest major hospital. Jeff didn't make it. Head injuries. He never knew what happened from the second he was thrown from his truck. I someone had gotten a nasty chemical burn on my ankle and the Air Force decided to let it heal naturally inside of doign grafts, etc. I'm grateful for that decision. Otherwise I got no major cuts, no broken bones. Policeman told me that if I HAD worn seatbelts in this case, I would have been killed. Entire top of the truck cab was sheared off of crushed to a pulp. Granted I did spent 3 months in the Air Force Academy hospital for my burn but how come I came out relatively OK but my friend didn't make it? That ate me up for years and years. I'm OK with it now however. And I'm the biggest advocate of seat belts on the planet. I was lucky in that case but belts would have helped Jeff perhaps. Used up 8 of my 9 lives during that accident. But it does seem that there are lucky stars for some people.
Didn't mean to hijack or belittle your thread All Bets. Stay safe and I hope that will be the only time something like that ever happens to you.......
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Just know this before my Honda, I had 49 cars, and NEVER wore a seatbelt however My Honda Makes me wear it EveyTime...and for this I thank Honda........