Florida driver injured after Corvette smashed to ‘pieces’

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how someone involved in such an accident as this, be ejected over 150 from the wreck and still survive…

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Answer… GOD’s Grace

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I think a few folks have fallen off of very tall buildings and survived, 15+ stories, depends on how they land, and what they land on. People can really get tossed in weird directions in car wrecks. One photo (posted here as I recall) showed someone who got thrown out & up and stuck on an overhead power line quite a distance above the ground.

Sometimes Darwin takes a vacation…

I suspect Darwin will get another chance to clean the gene pool with this one. :skull:

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The article said the driver suffered serious injuries but they had no further update. Hopefully he survives. Looking at the wreck, you wouldn’t think anyone could survive. Stranger things have happened.

Remember Juliane Koepcke? She was the lone survivor of a plane crash on Christmas Eve 1971. The plane was struck by lightning and disintegrated around her. She fell 10,000 feet while strapped to her seat. She then proceeded to survive for 11 days in the Amazon.

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What a waste of a fine f____ng Corvette!

Too bad the guy wasn’t on Darwin’s list.

It looks like the seatbelt is completely gone on the driver side. Maybe it’s those load limiters! Maybe the outside seat belt anchor broke away and it pulled the whole seat belt out with it. A seat belt would normally hold 6000 pounds but a load limited one is more like 1000.

First responders may have cut it to free the driver.
I was in a very bad wreck when I was younger. They cut off everything including all my clothes and a vintage wool army waist jacket I was wearing at the time.

The article said the driver “was ejected 154 feet from the wreck.” If you review the photos again (5th photo…), you’ll notice that the seats are in the general area of the rest of the vehicle. So I do not think when the driver was “ejected,” he stayed with the seat…

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Ejections are frequently fatal. Modern cars provide a lot of protection in a crash. Wearing a seatbelt and being protected by the car gives the best chance for survival. As @weekend-warrior said this was God’s grace.

Its like the car exploded around the driver.

By doing so, it performed its final design function…

I see pass shoulder belt but drivers is gone. I assume when it broke the stub was retracted back into door column.

For sale: rare Ikea Corvette…

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It won’t retract after the pretensioners have fired. If the front driver airbag deployed then so did the pretensioner. Either the driver was still in the seat and they cut it, or it is hanging behind where we can’t see it, or the load limiter let it spool way out and then it broke off the seat belt retractor completely.

It’s interesting how the write-up makes the driver out as a victim. “Cut-off” by the mystery Mustang, swerved and hit another car, then everything else happened to him. And he wasn’t identified, although most of us carry ID and register our cars. On the other hand he was going 150 on a street. Seems like dumb luck and maybe effective safety engineering of the car.

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I noticed that too. The media really promoting that view on many topics. On the flip side if you gain anything, or just have something, whether you stole it or you worked for it, you are the criminal who should be punished. The Mustang driver may have been more cautious and decided to slow down, so it is the Mustang driver who is at fault because the Mustang driver came out ahead. In a nutshell bad behavior is rewarded.

While driving my first car at age 16, I’m on I-25 and my friend said, “Let’s see how fast it will go”. With the ignorance of youth, I noted the speedometer at 110 MPH just before the hood blew up covering the windshield. I managed to stick my head out the window and get it off the road without mishap, but that was the last time I sped. I can actually say, I made it to age 68 without a speeding ticket. I’ll be curious if the driver of the disintegrated Vette learns the lesson.

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Some members wondered if the driver learned his lesson. I guess it all depends on how one defines his lesson. Was it street racing? Was it driving too fast? Was it racing a car of equal power and speed? Was it don’t have accidents? Or maybe, don’t get caught?

I imagine that this will not be the last high-speed situation this driver will be involved in… The insurance will replace (almost all of…) the car. The driver will “want to get back on the horse…” and he probably now suffers from an invulnerability complex that “nothing can hurt him…”

All too often, “victims” of these types of accidents are not prosecuted as the public believes they suffered enough and there is no "pay day’ for the district attorney to pursue them. The only victim was the driver…

Here is Virginia, depending on the speed at which you are caught and the posted speed limit, reckless driving by speed has a variety of different consequences. Driving by speed is a class 1 misdemeanor, meaning it is punishable by up to 12 months in jail and up to a $2,500 fine or a combination thereof. In addition reckless driving by speed also may include up to 6 months loss of your Virginia driving privileges.

If you were driving at more than 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph regardless of how many mph over the speed limit you were driving you may be found guilty of reckless driving based on speed.

I’ve not seen drivers like this put in jail nor any high profile fines to deter this type of behavior.

I am sure every one of the members remembers the fiery accident (2013) that took the life of actor Paul Walker, who starred in the Fast & Furious series of action films when he was killed in a car crash in California. Granted he was a passenger in the car when it crashed, but he was known for driving fast and he made it clear in interviews that his love of speeding was not confined to the silver screen. He often bragged, “I did 197 MPH, I just haven’t broken 200 yet, which is driving me crazy. I’ll do it.”

Drivers like this and distracted drivers scare me. No matter how cautious I am, they can come out of “no-where” and kill and maim innocent folks. This driver should face jail time, fines, and lose of his license for a significantly long time.

Do I only need an Allen wrench for assembly?

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