Originally Posted by NAVY08

Wow that was a nice car, anyone know if Dave was a forum member?
Poor car glad he is ok

Originally Posted by sandmanusd

From the looks of it, there was no pre impact braking at all... there are no skid marks or anything prior to him striking the railing... if he was "getting on it" around the turn and lost it, there would be skid marks from the "OH CRAP brake stomp".... probably just either dozed off or wasn't paying attention to the road.... and just PLOWED right into the railing.... man did that rail save his life!!!!

here are the pics I am talking about... no skid marks that I can see.. and on the close ups... I don't see any there either...

Originally Posted by 1998 GTR

Thanks all, for the kind words and concern. Yes, I was very lucky to walk away without so much as a scratch or bump. The car on the other hand, as you can see in the pics, got a little scratched up!

The thing that keeps rolling through my head is the sight of the guardrail intruding well into the passenger area. I am soooooooooo thankful I had no passenger! This will definitely change my driving habits on future drives (yes, I’ll be back out there soon as soon as it’s repaired or replaced).

This was not a case of driving beyond abilities or conditions. As mentioned earlier, we really were just cruising. The car grossly under-steered through the corner. I take corners MUCH faster than this on a regular basis! It almost didn’t even BEGIN to turn. As best as I can tell, it was attributable to nearly worn out front tires. That, along with the fact that this was literally about the 2nd or 3rd corner of the run – Cold, tires with minimal tread are a bad combination! The real pisser is I had a new set of front rubber in the garage that I had just purchased on E-Bay last week. I knew they were getting bad, but I didn’t realize how bad. My error was one less of driving, and more of maintenance. Either way, I really screwed up!

So my lesson is two-fold out of this -- (1) Don’t try to milk the last few miles out of worn-out tires, and look at ALL wear items more closely and more often, and (2) While I’ve always felt I leave an ample safety margin in my driving and my speed (never push it past about 60% to 70% of the car’s ability or my ability [on the street]), I obviously need to leave a much larger margin of safety for the totally unimaginable. I hope that others might heed my lessons as well, and save themselves the experience I had today.

While it breaks my heart to see the car wrecked like that, it’s just a THING. It can be fixed or replaced. As many have commented, I was VERY lucky that it was only a replaceable material thing that was damaged. The thought of other possibilities will be with me forever!

Thanks again everyone for your concern. Thanks Phil for the LONG ride home! I owe you! Thanks to those on the cruise who all stopped to help. Thanks to the couple (sorry, I didn’t get your names) for making the arrangements with the body shop. And sorry I screwed up a perfectly beautiful cruise on a gorgeous day!

Hey, the insurance adjuster will be looking at the car next week – Did anybody see what happened to that supercharger under the hood? My agent tells me the insurance covers mods as long as they were permanently installed. Yeah, I’m sure I remember a supercharger under there somewhere – Maybe it fell off into the creek!

I’ll see everyone out there again soon. Drive safe!