https://www.wataugademocrat.com/news...2735c037a.html

I thought y’all might find this interesting. This pretty disco belonged to a buddy of mine. He crashed it a couple years back.

 

"The driver was charged with failure to maintain lane control."

I hate stuff like this.
I guess more detail as to why this happened would be helpful. I've been up 105 from the Morganton end to Linville.
Was he going too fast? I find that hard to believe though given the state of the road conditions.

Just aggravating that he totals his truck and sustains injuries in the process and they feel the need to site him. What was the point of that?

 

That's too bad, and the citation is bit unnecessary.

 

When I rolled my 97 D1 back in the day (on an S curve trying to avoid a deer). I was given a ticket for wreckless driving & was told by the officers I must have been going over 50MPH (I was in fact going 45MPH). Only time I’ve ever gone to court over a ticket, and it was dismissed!

I wasn’t driving wreckless & I certainly wasn’t speeding! When I tried to avoid the deer I went off the side if the road a bit to go around the buck in the middle of the S curve, and although the shoulder “looked” flat it was in fact a 4ft deep V ditch & that was that!

I walked away without a scratch, but my D1 did a complete 360, then I rolled down a fence 2-3 rolls for sure, landed back on my wheels and then slammed head on into a massive cedar tree & then it rolled over onto it’s side one more time before totally stopping. Frontend was about 2ft shorter lol. All the doors opened & besides a blown out sunroof no other glass broke.

 

How full were your pants, and did you have a spare set?

 

It was a wild ride for sure, but it wasn't my first roll over accident lol. Many years earlier my first vehicle was an 87 Dodge Raider aka Mitsubishi Montero 2DR. I took flight in that thing going right at 50MPH (deer slammed into me at 50MPH and went straight into my RF wheel well), rolled once, skidded down the road on my side and came to a stop (the last thing I heard before the battery got disconnected was the song "Thank You" by Alanis Morissette lol). I was then sitting in the middle of the road in pitch black without a single light on. I saw a set of head lights coming straight for me, I couldn't climb out the passenger door as the deer that nailed me damaged it to badly, I couldn't lift the rear cargo door as it was just like a D1/D2 and extremely heavy, and last but not least I couldn't squeeze out the rear sliding windows. I just sat there at age 18 and was ready to bite the big one!

At the last second it missed me by maybe 2ft. I'll never forget this and I promise I'm not lying either. It was a Black Cadillac Sedan, and the drivers door opened and this very beautiful leg appeared basically right out my front windshield (they'd backed up after nearly hitting me) with a silver/diamond looking high heel. I heard this voice say are you okay in there and I instantly recognized it as Anna Nicole Smith!!!! I said yes I'm okay, and the sexy leg lifted back up into the Caddy, the door closed and she drove off. Leaving me in the middle of the road on FM1376 30 miles from the nearest town. (A lot of Hollywood people would go to Fredricksburg, TX for parties or to stay the weekend & FM1376 was the direct road from Boerne, TX). After that I squeezed my butt out of that rear sliding window and got the heck out of my Dodge Raider, then finally some ranchers came by, one had a cell phone and they all wanted to winch my truck off the road. I screamed NO we can just flip it over and the 4 of us grabbed the gutter rail and after 3 attempts it fell back over onto it's wheels. I of coarse went into damage control mode. The drivers side had the double yellow lines from the road straight down the side of it, the drivers mirror although chewed up on the back was still functional, and after I re-attached the battery, and turned it over she fired right up and ran like nothing had even happened.

30min or so later the TX State Troopers showed up, a fire truck, and an ambulance. They all got out and were like where is the roll over? The rancher pointed to me and said this young man right here did & that little gold SUV that's running is his. The EMT's checked me out and besides a sore shoulder from squeezing out of that tiny rear window I was fine. They left along with the fire truck and the DPS officer asked me if I wanted a ride home after that horrible accident. I said well my truck is running and I'm honestly fine. He said well if it's got all it's lights and you're okay to drive be safe young man. I then drove the 20 miles home and of coarse I was met at the gate by my mom & dad who were very worried about me. I got 3500.00 from the insurance company, fixed the 2 doors, 2 front fenders, painted it, and got a new set of tires. It went down as deer accident lol vs roll over. I wish my D1 had been so lucky!

The TX Hill County out past Boerne, TX is no joke at night especially during rut season, and hunting season!!! One time I counted 250 deer in a 15 mile stretch of FM473. After that I added aux lights that came on with my brights, and after my D1 rolled over all of my vehicles have had HD front bumpers. It's best just to hit the deer head on vs doing anything to risk loosing control. My dad hit 13 in one year with his Ranch Hand front bumper and I remember one time he hit a doe at maybe 60MPH. It was just a boom, a red mist all over the windshield, he hit the washer squirters, and never even stopped. We got about 30min down the road when the sun came up and people were looking at us. We finally pulled into a gas station and he had a deer leg hanging out of the Ranch Hand bumper, deer hair everywhere not to mention blood n tissue lol. Some of it had cooked, but we found a car wash, removed the deer leg, and went on about our way lol.

After all that we learned a technique for driving at night. Blind em, then slowly lead them off the side of the road and over a fence (unless it was a high game fence). That worked 90% of the time, and I've never taken flight since moving away from the TX Hill Country. During both accidents I was incredibly calm. No poo in my drawers honestly, but it was certainly a learning experience!

 

I was there last week. Very familiar with that area. Where is the trail in the above photo?

 

The accident didn’t have anything to do with aggressive driving etc. I believe the accident took place around noon. The story goes, we planned to go on a sunrise hike that morning and woke up around 5:00 am. On his way back from the hike, he began to feel drowsy and drove through a guard rail and off an embankment. Probably around a 50-65 foot drop and landed in a creek down below. Judging by the sight of the disco, it rolled over in the air and landed on the roof/passenger side edge and continued rolling until landing right side up. You can’t quite see in the photo, but his entire passenger side is crushed in. He also had a roof rack that came off on impact and was lying upside down several feet away. After the crash he got out of the disco with a scrape on his arm and abrasion across his chest from the seat belt and that was about it. When the paramedics arrived they insisted on winching him back up onto the highway on a stretcher though. The disco took it like a champ, but it’s clear that if anyone were sitting on the passenger side, they wouldn’t have made it. He got super lucky. In addition to receiving a road citation, the state made him pay for the guard rail too.

 

The trail is in the Boone/Blowing rock area. It’s sort of a secret among locals but it’s nicknamed the richlands. Overall, it’s about 8 miles long and spans between highway 321 and the blue ridge parkway. If you google ‘Richland road, blowing rock’ you should be able to find it.