A tragedy and poignant reminder
Discussion
I posted this on Seloc and thought I should add it here as well.
I know this is not the sort of thing anyone ever wants to hear happen, but in view of all the recent accidents, I feel obliged to write this:
On Thursday last week, a fellow elise driver (I don't know whom) was killed on a road near Pangbourne outside Reading. I work in A&E in Reading and heard from the paramedics who were called to the scene. I received first hand confirmation today, that the car was definitely a lotus elise and it appears that it hit a tree at high speed, completely destroying the car and splitting the chassis.
I thought long and hard before posting this, but as an A&E doctor, I am unfortunately exposed to this sort of thing all too often, but will never find it any easier to deal with. We all love our cars and the speed that goes with them, but please take extra care on the roads. I am seeing multiple car accident victims in A&E every day and clearly the roads are especially dangerous at this time of year. Please be careful and be safe.
Andrew
I know this is not the sort of thing anyone ever wants to hear happen, but in view of all the recent accidents, I feel obliged to write this:
On Thursday last week, a fellow elise driver (I don't know whom) was killed on a road near Pangbourne outside Reading. I work in A&E in Reading and heard from the paramedics who were called to the scene. I received first hand confirmation today, that the car was definitely a lotus elise and it appears that it hit a tree at high speed, completely destroying the car and splitting the chassis.
I thought long and hard before posting this, but as an A&E doctor, I am unfortunately exposed to this sort of thing all too often, but will never find it any easier to deal with. We all love our cars and the speed that goes with them, but please take extra care on the roads. I am seeing multiple car accident victims in A&E every day and clearly the roads are especially dangerous at this time of year. Please be careful and be safe.
Andrew
Well put - I'm 39, but I still remember my old man telling me when teaching me to drive when I was 17 that a car could kill and you could be killed in it - save the really quick driving for track days.
I have total respect for people like you who work in A&E, you must see some very harrowing sights.
I have total respect for people like you who work in A&E, you must see some very harrowing sights.
Tim Netherton said:
Well put - I'm 39, but I still remember my old man telling me when teaching me to drive when I was 17 that a car could kill and you could be killed in it - save the really quick driving for track days.
I have total respect for people like you who work in A&E, you must see some very harrowing sights.
My very first driving lesson (being taught to drive by my Auntie who is a police driving instructor) was being driven to a cemetry. My auntie introduced me to her 2 brotheres who are permenant residents and explained that they both died driving fast cars within 2 weeks of each other on the same part of the same road.
I have never forgotten this, I have often tried to ignore it (at my peril).
Drive safe.
Yep, when temparatures come below 7C the roads can become very scary if you don't adapt your speed to the conditions...
I also had some scary moments in my 24 years of driving, but never had a accident because of having sometimes a angel on my shoulder...but adreline pumps up very high at such moments when the road seems to be good, but there are some slippery or frozen parts on them then you must be lucky like me sometimes when making spins you don't wanted...and ofcorce a bit knowing what to do, you can always make it worse, when wrongly acting in a slip.
I hope 2006 will be a safe but with a lot of driversfun for all of us!
GTRene
I also had some scary moments in my 24 years of driving, but never had a accident because of having sometimes a angel on my shoulder...but adreline pumps up very high at such moments when the road seems to be good, but there are some slippery or frozen parts on them then you must be lucky like me sometimes when making spins you don't wanted...and ofcorce a bit knowing what to do, you can always make it worse, when wrongly acting in a slip.
I hope 2006 will be a safe but with a lot of driversfun for all of us!
GTRene
My wife knows the guys wife through a friend. He was 32 and leaves behind a 2 year old little boy.
He supposedly came off the road and hit the only tree in the field splitting the car in half. The police have said that they are campaigning to get Elises off the road because there is no crash protection.
His business partner was following in the car behind and saw the whole thing, they weren't driving that fast but suddenly the Elise lost tracktion and went straight on at corner. It hit black ice or a slippery spot.
How many of us cane it through the corners without even thinking what could happen? I certainly do.
Terrible luck,
Phil
He supposedly came off the road and hit the only tree in the field splitting the car in half. The police have said that they are campaigning to get Elises off the road because there is no crash protection.
His business partner was following in the car behind and saw the whole thing, they weren't driving that fast but suddenly the Elise lost tracktion and went straight on at corner. It hit black ice or a slippery spot.
How many of us cane it through the corners without even thinking what could happen? I certainly do.
Terrible luck,
Phil
Towzer said:
My wife knows the guys wife through a friend. He was 32 and leaves behind a 2 year old little boy.
He supposedly came off the road and hit the only tree in the field splitting the car in half. The police have said that they are campaigning to get Elises off the road because there is no crash protection.
His business partner was following in the car behind and saw the whole thing, they weren't driving that fast but suddenly the Elise lost tracktion and went straight on at corner. It hit black ice or a slippery spot.
How many of us cane it through the corners without even thinking what could happen? I certainly do.
Terrible luck,
Phil
That's sad.
Got to do a Walshy day - I've been getting more and more confident with the Elise in wet / cold weather - sounds like it's just waiting to catch me out.
Hi all, I originally posted this thread below on the SELOC forum, but I thought I'd share this with you. Very sad, indeed.....
"Hi all, this is very sad news, especially as I was in e-mail correspondence with Adam via the Pistonheads forum. Here is an e-mail conversation I had with him in November.... I had that horrible "Oh my God, not someone I "sort of know (albeit distant)" feeling when I read Shangani's thread with his name....
Here's the e-mail... Please, all "Be careful", Jon ...........
"Subject : Re: new 111R
| | | Inbox
I hope to pick mine up tomorrow I brought it from nick whale in Birmingham got a bit of a deal!
would love to meet up once the cars are run in!
i am in woodley
will let you know how I get on
I am struggling to find a local dealer though to service the car how far away are bell and colvill
I know sgt in maidenhead used to sell lotus but I don't know if you car get them serviced there
will talk to you soon
cheers
Adam
----- Original Message ----- From: "JONSCZ"
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:18 PM
Subject: new 111R
This email has been forwarded by PistonHeads.com
Your email address has not been revealed to the sender
of the message, but will be if you choose to reply.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Adam, hope you don't mind me e-mailing you "off-forum" (pistonheads), but I, too, am hopefully getting a new elise 111R next weekend(ish) and am also based in Berkshire (Bracknell-ish) and would be interested to hear of your experiences with dealers. I bought mine from Bell & Colvill and have, thus far, had excellent service from them, so wil probably just stick with them. Didn't realise about the 1000 mile service, though. Will maybe see you at a Pistonheads meet, or at dealer spending money on upgrades!!!). Cheers, Jon"
>> Edited by jonscz on Wednesday 4th January 20:53
>> Edited by jonscz on Wednesday 4th January 22:00
"Hi all, this is very sad news, especially as I was in e-mail correspondence with Adam via the Pistonheads forum. Here is an e-mail conversation I had with him in November.... I had that horrible "Oh my God, not someone I "sort of know (albeit distant)" feeling when I read Shangani's thread with his name....
Here's the e-mail... Please, all "Be careful", Jon ...........
"Subject : Re: new 111R
| | | Inbox
I hope to pick mine up tomorrow I brought it from nick whale in Birmingham got a bit of a deal!
would love to meet up once the cars are run in!
i am in woodley
will let you know how I get on
I am struggling to find a local dealer though to service the car how far away are bell and colvill
I know sgt in maidenhead used to sell lotus but I don't know if you car get them serviced there
will talk to you soon
cheers
Adam
----- Original Message ----- From: "JONSCZ"
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:18 PM
Subject: new 111R
This email has been forwarded by PistonHeads.com
Your email address has not been revealed to the sender
of the message, but will be if you choose to reply.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Adam, hope you don't mind me e-mailing you "off-forum" (pistonheads), but I, too, am hopefully getting a new elise 111R next weekend(ish) and am also based in Berkshire (Bracknell-ish) and would be interested to hear of your experiences with dealers. I bought mine from Bell & Colvill and have, thus far, had excellent service from them, so wil probably just stick with them. Didn't realise about the 1000 mile service, though. Will maybe see you at a Pistonheads meet, or at dealer spending money on upgrades!!!). Cheers, Jon"
>> Edited by jonscz on Wednesday 4th January 20:53
>> Edited by jonscz on Wednesday 4th January 22:00
How the hell do you tell a 2yr old that Dad aint coming home anymore.
Makes you realise how fragile it all really is.
Just reading this has made me realise that, no matter how much I enjoy driving the Elise, my true responsibility is to my wife and kids. I'm slow compared to some of you in the BoLOCs group, I guess I may even be slower now.
Makes you realise how fragile it all really is.
Just reading this has made me realise that, no matter how much I enjoy driving the Elise, my true responsibility is to my wife and kids. I'm slow compared to some of you in the BoLOCs group, I guess I may even be slower now.
Towzer said:
The police have said that they are campaigning to get Elises off the road because there is no crash protection.
Surely the police have no where to go with this. The elise is a safe car, not the safest & there are worst cars to have a crash in.
Any car can kill you if you hit the wrong thing at the wrong time & the wrong speed.
Just a very, very tragic accident
My condolences to his family.
I know from my off road in the elise, that it can go very quickly wrong. I did not hit anything but it could easily have been different had I gone off the other side into the trees or into the oncomming trafic..
No body expects to crash, but the police can not just try an ban a car type. Its only missing an airbag. ( Is this now an option in the UK cars ? ) But even that may not have gone off because the car may not have been going head on when it hit the tree. Airbags are worse for you if they fire at the wrong time or in the wrong type of accident, so they are setup to go off in just about 100% head on stops. Add a bit of side ways movement and they dont fire, thats when you need side airbags etc....
We dont have the information to know why this accident happened. We get to see a lot of damaged elises on this and seloc and many people walk away from them.
Its always sad no matter what car or situation has caused a death, again my condolences to his family.
I know from my off road in the elise, that it can go very quickly wrong. I did not hit anything but it could easily have been different had I gone off the other side into the trees or into the oncomming trafic..
No body expects to crash, but the police can not just try an ban a car type. Its only missing an airbag. ( Is this now an option in the UK cars ? ) But even that may not have gone off because the car may not have been going head on when it hit the tree. Airbags are worse for you if they fire at the wrong time or in the wrong type of accident, so they are setup to go off in just about 100% head on stops. Add a bit of side ways movement and they dont fire, thats when you need side airbags etc....
We dont have the information to know why this accident happened. We get to see a lot of damaged elises on this and seloc and many people walk away from them.
Its always sad no matter what car or situation has caused a death, again my condolences to his family.
From the description and having seen pictures of the damage etc, I doubt there is any car around that would would have changed the outcome of this accident. It was desperately unlucky and tragic for the young man involved. The car could easily have missed the tree. If you have seen footage on 5th gear of a 40mph impact onto a telephone pole, the damage is catastrophic. A 60 - 70 mph impact into a tree will demolish any car - to want to ban elises is plainly ridiculous. Many high speed impacts have involved elises and the drivers have walked away. This is a situation of terrible bad luck.
Driving is inherently a dangerous activity and many uncontrollable variables exist. Though I did not know Adam, he lived nearby and words of his posts and emails reflect someone with enthusiasm much like ourselves. My thoughts like everyone here are with his family and friends.
Driving is inherently a dangerous activity and many uncontrollable variables exist. Though I did not know Adam, he lived nearby and words of his posts and emails reflect someone with enthusiasm much like ourselves. My thoughts like everyone here are with his family and friends.
I completely echo your comments Andrew. For what it is the Elise is a very strong car, I've seen and heard of horrendous high speed stacks where the front and back ends have caved in completely but the passenger cell has remained intact.
Andy Walsh's girlfriend had a high speed one on the motorway and walked away.
This poor guy was unlucky and paid the ultimate price - from the sounds of things the only thing which could have saved him would have been slower speed (perhaps) and luck. That's not to say he was driving one bit dangerously or irresponsibly whatsoever.
Went out to get a haircut this morning, pootling through town and doing brake tests to get the cack of my disks where car hasn't been used for a few days and it's locking up at the front all over. Very, very slippy. I had the tail out on a roundabout at less than 10mph (provoked admittedly) but it went almost immediately.
Be very, very, very easy on the right foot ladies and gents.
Andy Walsh's girlfriend had a high speed one on the motorway and walked away.
This poor guy was unlucky and paid the ultimate price - from the sounds of things the only thing which could have saved him would have been slower speed (perhaps) and luck. That's not to say he was driving one bit dangerously or irresponsibly whatsoever.
Went out to get a haircut this morning, pootling through town and doing brake tests to get the cack of my disks where car hasn't been used for a few days and it's locking up at the front all over. Very, very slippy. I had the tail out on a roundabout at less than 10mph (provoked admittedly) but it went almost immediately.
Be very, very, very easy on the right foot ladies and gents.
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