Project Petrolhead

I don’t like to glamourise car crashes. I’m fully aware that cars can be extremely hazardous to human life if used incorrectly so driving one in a manner that leads to a crash should never be celebrated. I’m lucky enough to have only been in one car crash (so far) and no other parties were involved, but it became an incredibly formative event in my motoring life. Here’s how it happened.

To set the scene, I had at this point, been driving on a full licence for around 6 months and had been pootling around in my beloved 2003 Ford Fiesta 1.4 Zetec. It was early December 2017 and Britain had been covered in a thick blanket of snow. I had never driven in the snow before, so I asked my Dad to take me out and show me the ropes.  My Dad is a brilliant driver, doubly so in the snow. He once drove a BMW E90 318d back from Erdington to Tamworth in heavy snow, including what seemed to be a 90° right-hand bend on a ¼ gradient hill, taken in a slow, perfectly controlled drift. He might look like Suggs from Madness, but he drives like Alain Prost.

Dad took me to an empty industrial estate (it was a Sunday so there was nobody about), plonked me behind the wheel and told me told me to set off. About 100 yards down the road he pulled the handbrake, locking the rear wheels and causing the back of the car to slide on the icy tarmac and taught me how to control a wildly fishtailing hatchback in the event of the car losing grip. I spent the afternoon driving like a hooligan being played at 0.5x speed and, being a teenager, I thought that made me an expert in car control.

The following Monday, I thought nothing of grabbing my keys and jumping into the car for my 2.5-mile commute to work. There was still lots of snow and ice on the road, but clearly, I was Paddy Hopkirk reincarnated (even though he wasn’t dead at the time) and could easily tackle this stage of the Finnish Rally Championship. For around 2.4 miles, everything was going remarkably well but, as I rounded the penultimate bend, disaster struck.

To give you an idea of Geography, the industrial estate I worked on at the time featured a small ditch that ran parallel to the roadside (affectionately dubbed “The Moat” by the people I worked with) which was about 5 feet lower than the road surface. I attempted to round the corner, but even though I was only travelling at 20mph (a fact often disputed by people who weren’t there, they know who they are) the front end of the Fiesta decided to simply carry on forwards. I slid wide and before you know it, the front of the car had hit the bottom of the moat and the entire ensemble had fallen forwards, leaving the car on it’s roof, the side windows smashed and me in the driver’s seat wondering how the hell I was going to extricate myself from the mangled city car.

Despite the ludicrous state I left the car in, I managed to get out almost entirely unscathed. The only injuries I sustained were a bruised shoulder (whacked after releasing the seatbelt, sending me flying towards the roof) and a small cut on my finger, administered by a thorn bush unhelpfully situated just outside the driver’s side door. I crawled out of the wrecked Fiesta only to be greeted by the face of my then boss, who had driven to the office in his first-generation Volvo XC90 D5 (R-Design, AWD, Manual. It’s funny what you remember). He got out and peered over the side of the moat to see his apprentice stood sheepishly next to an upturned Ford. “Thank Goodness” I thought “He’s got the Volvo, he can help me flip the car back over!” But I suspect that thought never crossed his mind.

“Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“You alright?”

“A bit shaken.”

“Ok. See you at the office.”

To my utter bemusement, he proceeded to hop back into the warm, dry, still upright Volvo and drive away. Marvelous. Luckily, a passing policeman helped me out of the moat and arranged for a flatbed truck to come and collect the stricken Fiesta. Then came the worst part. I had to make a phone call.

“Hi Dad, don’t panic but I’ve stuffed it.”

15 mins later, Dad’s grey W212 Mercedes E class Estate (220d AMG Line, dubbed “Guffs” thanks to its amusing numberplate) appeared and I was filled with an enormous sense of relief. Then the emotional rollercoaster took a turn towards the floor. The Fiesta was recovered, hauled up onto a flatbed, driven to Burton and subsequently crushed. I never saw it after the flatbed drove off, I was just handed a small plastic bag containing my recovered belongings by a man in a hi-vis vest who told me the car had been destroyed. I remember the feeling of emptiness I experienced as I clutched that bag. It felt like losing a family member or pet. My first car, the car that gave me my freedom, was gone, and it was never coming back. Taken from me by hi-vis men from the next town over. The remorseless bugger even had the gall to charge me £200 for the privilege.

Two things stuck out to me that day. Firstly, the black box I had fitted to the car as part of my insurance policy had not registered an impact of any kind. This led me to conclude that these devices were inherently untrustworthy and as soon as I could afford a policy that would have me rid of the useless e-waste, I took it. Secondly, that things could have been much, much worse. I am (at time of writing) still alive, and I intend to keep it that way. I took the time to learn as much proper car control as possible in the hope that, should something like this ever happen again, I would have the necessary skills to avoid disaster.

The accident definitely stuck with me. Even now, 7 years later, I still don’t like driving in the snow if I can help it. And one other thing, up until the moment of impact, I had been happily listening to a song that had been part of my day-to-day playlist for years; the Eagles seminal classic, Hotel California. I’m not particularly superstitious, but I’ve never listened to it since.