With the recent death of Anton Yelchin I was reminded of an incident that almost took my life 18 years ago. I don't think I've ever told this story here.
Back story
I had purchased a 1979 Trans Am from a co-workers brother. It was a WS6 car with a 403 Olds engine and an auto. I was out cruising around with it one evening. I came upon a set of railroad tracks. I was driving directly into the setting sun. What I couldn't see was that a spike was loose and sticking up a large amount directly in front of the car. When I hit it, it ripped off the front sway bar, caught the Y-pipe breaking both exhaust manifolds, ripped the shifter assembly off the side of the trans, the emergency brake cables and rear sway bar off the car. I got a quote to fix it all and submitted it to the railroad for reimbursement. While I was waiting, the garage I was working for and where the car was, ran into IRS trouble and was shut down by the feds. I got a call while I was out of town crewing for a midget racer that I had to move the car by Monday. My brother said that I could keep it on his carport until it was ready to go to the transmission shop. I wasn't going to be back into town until Sunday afternoon and arranged for the car to be towed to his place when I would be back in town. At this point the car had no trans or parking brakes.
The incident
My brother has a one car garage with a covered carport adjacent to it. The concrete slopes down towards the back. At the back of the carport the concrete is about four feet above grade. There is a chain link fence about a foot behind his carport, the top rail is a couple inches below his concrete, and a neighbors garage is around two feet behind that.
The tow truck driver backed the car into the carport and I put a piece of 4x4 lumber behind the drivers side rear tire to hold the car. After paying him and watching him drive away I thought I should put another chock behind the other tire to make sure it didn't move. As I was walking around the rear of the car I accidentally kicked the 4x4 out from the tire. The car started rolling back, I grabbed it at the rear fender well and was able to hold it, but, I couldn't reach the piece of lumber to kick back behind the tire. Being alone, with no one else around, I came up with the brilliant idea of pushing the car forward as much as I could then trying to grab the piece of wood and stopping the car again. Unfortunately, the car picked up a good amount of momentum and when I got behind it I couldn't stop it. I was pushing as hard as I could but the car was steadily rolling towards the end of the carport. At the last second I tried to jump backwards over the chain link fence. My foot slipped and as the car rolled to the end of the concrete I fell down, my legs were caught on top of the fence as the car dropped off the edge, luckily, the frame got caught on the edge of the concrete. The gas tank came to rest on my legs at my right thigh and my left shin. It's a good thing there was a fence post about a foot to the right of my right leg, I think that helped hold the car from completely dropping off the end of the carport and crushing me.
So, there I was pinned between the gas tank and the top rail of the fence, hanging upside down, with no one around. I remember looking up and seeing the bright blue sky with not a cloud in sight. I pulled down on the fence with all my might but it didn't budge, I foolishly pushed up on the car, again it didn't budge. At that point I just started screaming HELP!, I screamed at the top of my lungs. Eventually a neighbor heard and came to see what was going on. He ran to get help and called 911. He got a couple other people and grabbed a railroad tie to try and pry it open enough to get me out, to no avail.
The fire department showed up. At this point I don't know how long I had been hanging upside down and I was getting close to blacking out. I had used a ton of energy screaming and trying to hold my head up. I know they evaluated the situation and used airbags to prevent the car from shifting back and then used the jaws of life to cut the fence rail and get me out. I passed out instantly as soon as they moved the weight off of me, waking up in the hospital.
They were concerned about blood clots migrating to my heart but that didn't turn out to be an issue. The only injuries suffered was some severe bone bruising to my legs and about ten stitches in my left hand. I guess it got caught in the fence. No long term issues at all. I was so very lucky.
I was never scared, or panicked. At the time it didn't even register how close I actually came to being killed. That next day I showed up for the first day of my new job as a tire changer at Micheal Tire with a massively bandaged hand and hobbling around on two very sore legs.
It's crazy now to think about it. People always joke about how lucky they are to survive their youth, I really am.
