Guess I need to work on my landing... (click for larger pics)





OK, here's the real story:

I was driving on the highway to visit my parents on the Monday following Father's Day. I was in the left lane, doing about 90km/h (55 mph), and some chick in a black Grand Am decides she's going to pull into my lane without checking her blind spot. Guess where I was? I hit the brakes and move left to avoid her (successfully). Once she's about half-way into my lane, she suddenly sees my grill in her rear-view and yanks her wheel to the right. Problem is, she oversteers and quickly leaves my lane, goes back into her lane, then continues on into the right lane. Realizing her mistake, she then pulls her wheel to the right, oversteering worse than before, and comes at me head on. I pound the pedal praying I can somehow get in front of her, but by this time she's maybe 10 feet away and doing about 55 mph, so I brace for impact...

She hits me in the front passenger side, spinning my box 90° clockwise. The box immediately seems to "pop" off the ground and roll, first hitting the ground on the top driver's side edge, near the back of the vehicle (see pic 4). It bounces and continues rolling, this time landing on the hood, on the passenger's side. The box keeps rolling, and eventually stops on the driver's side, blowing out the driver's window, before sliding another 12 feet along the highway. In total it looks like a 1 and 1/4 roll, though watching the road spin around in front of me, it felt like a lot more.

And here's the interesting part: I'm perfectly fine. I had a small bruise on my waist, but it was gone the next day. The most painful part to me was seeing my car wrecked and lying on its side on the highway.

The other driver was a bit shaken up, but otherwise she was fine as well. Oddly enough, neither her nor my airbags deployed. She ended up being charged under the Highway Traffic Act with careless driving, which includes a 6 demerit point penalty (in Ontario, Canada, if you recieve 9 demerit points on your license it is suspended).

 

holy crap dude! it only hapends to the nice xB's right? looks like another lost RS1 :-(

glad to hear your ok though.

 

thats one of the most depressing things ive seen in some time... sorry about that man... what are you gonna do?

 

Sorry for your loss. I would start stripping things out. Like are the billet grills salvageable. Rip out the front seats as well. Get what you can out of it to sell.

 

Just curious why you didn't slam on the brakes the first instance you see her losing control swerving away from you. If **** were to happen (which it did), it would happen way in front of you b/c you'd be stopped/slowed well behind the idiotic driver. There are MANY dumb@ss drivers here in Miami. The first thing I do is slow or stop and get some distance between myself and the other driver.

 

OUCH!!! Sorry bout your Lava man!

 

Dude that really sucks, and its very odd that your airbags didnt deploy! Ive had bad luck like that in previous cars (the last one I was driving was hit by a woman in a black suv who didnt check her blind spot, nothing this serious though just pushed me into a curb at a pretty good clip), Im glad to hear that you walked away safetly...

What are your plans for her? Are you rebuilding, restarting, or walking away (hopefully not that one)?

 

wow dang dude. that is really .... crazy. glad that you did make it out fine though. sad to see another box hit the dirt though. it really shows just how much MORE we need to do to educate drivers about driving skills and car control.
good thing you knew what you were doing. no way to predict how that girl was going to commit the same mistake twice ...

 

That's a question I've been asking myself for the past two weeks, but the reality is there was just too much going on. Traffic then was really rough. It was rush hour, and the accident occurred maybe a few hundred yards from a ramp onto the highway. Mostly everyone was driving at or above the speed limit, but because of the on-ramp, everyone was clumped together with less than a car length between cars (though there was a lot of room between me and the person in front of me), yet everyone was still traveling around 55 mph.

When I first stepped on the brakes to avoid the other car, I was aware that the people behind me were very close, so I didn't slow down as much as I would have liked to, for fear everyone behind me would plow into me. By the time I realized she was out of control and heading right for me, I was already out of time. Whether I had braked hard, accelerated hard, or just stayed there, by that time there was no avoiding the collision. But you are right, I should have slowed down and continued to slow down as soon as she entered my lane. A lesson learned the hard way.

Thanks for your support everyone, I really appreciate it. It's been two weeks, but it still seems fresh to me.

I managed to pull out the RS Identifying plate thing, as well as the underseat lighting and the hotchkiss strut brace before the insurance company took my car away. I forgot to grab the smaller billet grill pieces though, and the day I remembered they came and took it away. The larger piece was messed up, but I think the smaller pieces were OK. Oh well.

Speaking of insurance, I ended up getting enough money that I could spend about $13,500 USD on another box and bring it back up to Canada, which is about $3000 more than I spent on the RS 1.0 last year. I'm looking around for a 3.0 or 4.0 to replace it, and I've got my eyes on a 3.0 in Fort Lauderdale.

 

duude....no words man. that's awful. is an 08 xB in the near future for you?

 

Sorry about your xB. Guess you've got an excuse to get a new one! Any way you could take pics of the inside? I'm curious how the passenger side looks with it popped in like that.

 

Owowowow. Absolutely amazing (and wonderfully good!) that you just walked away from that. I've read other stories of xBs in rollover accidents at high speed, and they all had similarly happy endings (for the occupants, if not the vehicle...).

Maybe not that odd that the airbags didn't deploy - there's not that much damage to the front of the vehicle, so it's unlikely that the accelerometers that trigger the airbags detected a sudden enough change in velocity. If the xB had side airbags...

This might be a ridiculous question, but is it totaled?

And my condolences to you - it's gotta be especially hard; I'd guess xBs are very rare in Canada.

 

Dude, dont even think back at it, coming from someone who has been in split second accidents (or even drawn out ones like you were in) there is nothing you could've done, slamming your breaks would've gotten you rear-ended, swerving would've made YOU lose control and likely hit someone, speeding up was the best thing you could've done, if you hadnt you may have been in a head-on collision and may not've been so lucky...

Dont think of what you could've done to avoid it, think of what you're going to do to prevent it from happening again.

 

xB's in Canada? whats that all aboot?

 

Hm, probably not at this point. I'm a student, so I don't have a lot of money after what the insurance company has given me, which unfortunately falls a couple thousand short of an '08. Maybe in a few years though.

I took a couple of photos of the inside (I don't have them with me though), but none of the passenger's side. The passengers' doors were firmly stuck shut, but otherwise there actually didn't seem to be much damage to the pillar there, which I found a little surprising.

Ah, side airbags. That's part of the reason why an '08 feels pretty appealing right now, though I have to wonder: since I made it out safely without the airbags, I wonder in this case if they could have done more harm than good?

xBs are definitely hard to find up here, and they sell for a lot of money. I've seen 10 or so up here in the past year of driving, but I think several of them were the same box! As far as I can tell, I've actually only seen 6 different xBs myself up here, but I've heard of a few others.

My insurance company declared the car a complete write-off. Even though the engine still runs!

 

"LATE 360-SHOVE-IT-TO-BONELESS'D!"

Don't you mean "GRAND AM'MED!!!" "OUCH, MY RIGHT ANGLES!" D:

I award you one Consolation Internet. @_@ Glad you're okay. ::shows these pics to everyone he knows to prove xB's have good safety cages::

 

holy cow. so glad you are not injured. you are lucky man. People die from accidents like that.

Hopefully they afford enough $$ to get you another Box!!!

 

good gosh, man, at least you are ok.

now you have to go through importing another, eh.

 

I kind of like that all four of your hubcaps flew off. That's the xB's SPINNING DEADLY HUBCAP maneuver - when threatened, all the cosmetic pieces fly off the car, in hopes of frightening off any ohter would-be attackers! Oh, you were also going to rear-end me, Mr. Car Behind Me? Well, how would you like a taste of DANGEROUS FLYING WHEEL COVERS?!?!

Regarding the airbags: It is perfectly normal that your frontal airbags did not deploy. The frontals only go off during extreme deceleration, frontal impact, or violent downward movement, i.e. situations where you're likely to hit your face on the steering wheel. Side impacts, rear impacts, and most rollovers do not tickle the sensors in the appropriate manner. And let's face it, with all the problems you had inside that car, would you really want the steering wheel exploding in your face, too?

Side airbags can be extremely helpful during rollover accidents. Most car companies advanced enough to include them have them set up to inflate - and stay inflated for up to six seconds - in the event of a rollover. The vast majority of rollover fatalities (north of 75%) are unbelted passengers who are ejected from the car, but even belted people still get seriously injured impacting the interior of the passenger cabin. Standard three-point safety belts just aren't designed to restrict lateral movement, especially in a rollover.

You were probably unhurt because the car only rolled once and change; a lot of people who roll twice or more report being flung off the door, ceiling, seats, etc.... every time the car impacts, the centrifugal force disappears, and you bounce off whatever you were currently closest to. Side airbags would have been one more thing adding to the cost of repairs, but of course that's kind of moot in this case. Side airbags never do more harm than good.

Anyway, you're very lucky, but sorry your box is dead. Take care of yourself, and good luck getting another!

What did it SOUND like, btw? o.o

 

oh shiza! hey, just look back and have a good laugh, you survived what kills people in yukons....