This guy was driving down the road,
coming around a sharp bend on a "foggy"
night (he thinks it was foggy anyway) at a high rate
of speed and failed to negotiate a 90-degree corner
completely and went straight. Went straight over the
guy's lawn (airborne as he came off the road), accelerated
as he landed, tore up the guy's lawn, took out an
8" apple tree, sent the tree flying over 100
feet, then jumped the septic system, went through
the woods between two trees just barely wide enough
to fit the vehicle, crushing in both sides of the
vehicle, causing the car to start to spin as he flew
over a 4-foot wall, while taking out several good-sized
trees as he continued through the woods and landed
about 20 feet from the wall.
He climbed out of the vehicle, injured by obviously
still able to walk, tried to find his way out, saw
a light and climbed through the underbrush (probably
injuring himself more) and walked back to the house
he started from.
He gives me a call to go recover the vehicle, not
telling me where it is or how bad of shape the vehicle
is in. We get there and talk to the landowner (where
the apple tree was), who gave his permission to enter
his land to get the vehicle. At this point, however,
it became clear that where the vehicle landed was
NOT on his land. The police informed us we could not
attempt to recover the vehicle without the other landowner's
permission. After doing some searching for an owner,
we found a telephone number for his uncle, who lived
out of state, who informed us that the landowner was
out of the COUNTRY, at which point we had to wait
to hear from him.
About a week later, we get a telephone call from
the landowner, who has returned from Europe. I had
to go discuss with him how we were going to recover
the vehicle with the least damage to his property.
The landowner very kindly agreed to let us cut and
remove a few trees for easier access. We had to winch
it through a wild rose garden (and YES, THEY DO HAVE
THORNS!)
All in all, this was my longest recovery to date,
in that it took 2 weeks from start to finish.
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