This is from a good friend at work, who
had a serious accident with his much loved Corvette.
It happened because the "Jiffy Lube" place where he
took it sprayed tire glaze onto his rotors.
I'll tell you the good news up front. He will be back
to work soon, about 4 weeks after the accident.
He's an experienced driver; he's been driving stock
cars for decades now, and he knows what he's doing
behind the wheel.
Below is his story in an email he sent to me, with two
links. The first link is to his corvette's 'Before and
After' pictures (you can see how good it looked
beforehand), and the second is to pictures and xrays
of his arm (skip this second link if you are a little
squeamish):
*************************************************
Hi Jim, I stopped in to medical today. The nurses told me
that you had asked how I was doing.
What happened:
My daughter gave me an auto detailing as a present for
father’s day. I usually do my own but was busy on
9/10. Coming back from church I saw the carwash was
empty. They said that I could get it done then and it
would be about 40 min. I had a stack of vacation pics
to go through so I let them do it.
I don’t like the shiny stuff on the tires but I
forgot to tell them not to use it.
Apparently they got overspray of some silicone based
goo on my rotors. I took the car home and parked it
in the garage. It rained for a couple of days so I
didn’t drive it.
On 9/13 I went to work as usual. Each time I used
the brakes the glaze got a little harder. At
lunchtime I was taking a sympathy card around to a
couple of my guys on the Antenna range when it all
went really, really wrong. There is a road about ¼ mile long on the Ridge road
range that goes along the open area where we test
Wedgetail antennas. It dead ends into a parking lot.
I’m bopping along, step on the brakes… it won’t
stop!!!! Plenty of pedal but no friction! I broke a
bone in my knee pressing the damned brake pedal. I had 3 choices: 1) Hit a couple of pieces of heavy equipment
along the side of the road. 2) Hit some parked cars in the lot. 3) Hit a curb.
I chose the curb because a guy had been working on the
equipment and I didn’t know if he was still there. It
was lunchtime and I didn’t know if people were getting
into or out of their cars.
I didn’t think about the 50-100’ bank on the other
side of the curb. The car jumped the curb, got
airborne crashed head-on into mother earth then
flipped onto the roof.
Luckily somebody saw/heard it happen so I wasn’t
down there too long. One of my guys came down. He
got the driver’s door open and I crawled out under my
own power.
I knew I broke my arm (it looked like a rubber
snake), but otherwise felt OK.
The rescue team had to bring in a long ladder truck
and use it as a crane to bring me up the hill in a
basket. The Medevac helicopter landed on the field
and I was off to spend the next 2 days in the Shock
Trauma Clinic in Baltimore.
By the grace of GOD and a well built car I’m doing
better now, actually typing this with both hands. If
not for the belts & airbags there is no way I’d be
here. The injuries are: 1) Broken Left Arm 2) Broken bone in Right knee (non weight
bearing) 3) Fractured Sternum (from shoulder harness) 4) Fractured right ribs (from belts) 5) Face that looked like I made George Foreman
very, very mad ;-) Somehow I didn’t have any internal injuries, spinal
injuries, neck injuries or head injuries. I don’t
think I lost consciousness but I was dazed and
confused. When you look at the photos you’ll see why
I’m blessed to still be here.
The insurance company (Progressive) was good about the
vette’s value $12,650. I took it without haggling
since it was $650 more than I paid for it 3yrs ago.
Dave
[ http://www.deltaperfsys.com/vettepix ]
[ http://www.deltaperfsys.com/xray/ ]
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