Meh, don't get your knickers in such a knot pulse, it'll make your nutz hurt.

Having heard all the stats, I know my accident was an anomaly, but let's also start off by saying when it occurred, wearing a seat belt waddn even mandatory yet and that most people at that time chose not to wear them either. What a selfish society eh?

After workin for 3 months without a day off, while averagin about 11 hrs a day, and still tryin to keep up with the typical 20yr old bachelors party schedule on top of that, one mornin on my way TO work, I fell asleep at the wheel.

During my unplanned nap the freeway made a curve and I didn. I ran off the freeway at an estimated 60-70mph and slammed into a 6" thick concrete culvert facing with dirt behind it. The culvert facing came out of it amazingly well,

All in all several things worked in my favor that morning.

From my tracks it looked like I must've woken up about 100' before smackin the wall because I made a veer to the right to try and get onto the service road to the freeway that ran parallel to it. That change in trajectory was enough that I only hit the culvert facing with the drivers side of the front end of the car instead of hitting it head on, which likely would have made a more severe impact and problee launched me through the windshield.

Managing as I did to only hit the end of the culvert facing where it was relatively short, it was just tall enough to cream the whole front end from dead center in the front end and just below the hood all the way over to the drivers side end of the bumper.

It looked like you'd taken the car and literally planed it off flat from the center of the front end to where the drivers door started. Comically enough, the hood was still standing out there straight as an arrow.

The car managed to slide up over the top of the culvert facing after knockin off about a 2' X 8" X 6" thick chunk of the wall and hurlin it about 100' forward. Since I'd hit a glancing blow the car also spun around about 180 degrees, which is what slammed the right side of my face into the heater controls and radio in the center of the dash, amazingly that was another stroke of luck for me.

The whole planing off the front end of the drivers side of the car and sliding over the top of the concrete wall also folded the drivers front wheel up completely flat (horizontal) just under where my seat was.Then as the bottom edge of the car slid over the top of the wall it had folded the cars sheet metal back on itself till the metal under the drivers door looked like wadded up tin foil.

During the milliseconds or so all this took place in as the front drivers wheel came backwards, the steering wheel came up to an almost horizontal position, and this is the part where not having a seat belt on saved my life. Had I been wearing one I would have slammed my neck directly into the steering wheel instead of making a sideways run at it.

Both cops, both ambulance drivers and my doctors all agreed had I had a belt on there would have been a good chance the impact on my neck at that speed would likely have snapped my head off the end of my neck and then sent it flyin through the windshield, uh .... windscreen for you down under and euro cats.

Now then, let's take blahs perspective that he knows better than all the pros in this case and we'll say if I'd have had a seat belt on it would only have snapped my neck like a twig.

In this scenario problee the best I could have hoped for would have been I'd somehow miraculously have survived, but in all likelihood would also have been a quadriplegic.

So, being selfish and careless with my own safety managed to in all likelihood have saved my life, or at the very least kept me from having to have someone else wipe my ass for me for the rest of my days.

BTW, as a hint at just how violent the impact was when I smacked the wall, there was a big ol ceramic beer stein sized coffee mug sittin in the back seat that flew forward hittin the back of the passengers seat ... all that was left of it was a small pile of dust in the floor board, not even so much as the thick handle survived. And, in the whole planing off trick with the front end, the floor board on my side didn make it out the other side still bein flat. It folded backwards along with the rest of the bottom of the car so that just to the left of the gas pedal is where the new side of the car started and also what mangled up my feet.

After 9 days in the hospital, which included 2 surgeries, one on my face and the other on my shattered left ankle, then a month in a hospital bed and a wheel chair with casts on both legs, another month with a single walkin cast and crutches, and finally about 3 weeks of walkin with just crutches I was walking on my own again, without even a limp once I completely healed up, and was outta work for a total of 4 months.

I KNOW I was lucky, but I also know I'm here today because of that luck, and .... because I didn wear my fuckin seat belt