By now, a lot of you have heard of my accident I had when I was a teenager where I managed to rip a 75 Chevy Monza in two pieces.

For those that haven't, on December 23, 1998 I was in a severe accident. I was young, dumb, and thought I was invincible and unstoppable. I was very lucky that night that I didn't kill myself, and lucky that no one else was in my path of destruction.

I was driving way too fast and overcorrected on an odd curve in the road. That sent the ass end of the car around, and at that time everything else was out of my hands and I was along for the ride.

I proceeded to take out the end of a chain link fence, then hit a telephone pole sideways right behind the passenger door. The car started wrapping around the telephone pole and basically ripped at the seams behind the front seats. The front end of the car continued another 100 feet, went over some shrubbery, through a decorative wooden fence and stopped in a driveway facing the opposite direction that I was headed.

I could have very easily died that night had any one thing been different in the accident and left my family grieving for the holidays.

The photos from the next day (please excuse the quality as these are old 35mm photos that were scanned)













I post this story again because I woke up to some tragic news this morning. My 17 year old cousin (actually he's my cousin's son) was killed in an auto accident last night. They are estimating he was traveling in excess of 100 mph, lost control on a curve in the road, overcorrected, went off the edge of the road, hit an embankment, hit a stone wall, went airborne, hit a telephone pole, and rolled a few times.

Sadly, he was not alone in the car. There was a 17 year old female in the front seat and a 16 year old female in the back seat. The front seat passenger was also killed in the accident and the rear seat passenger had to be cut from the car and was life flighted out. She is currently listed in serious condition.

Two young lives, gone in an instant, and another probably affected for the rest of her life.

My intention of this post is to just have some of the people here (especially the younger ones) think twice about smashing the loud pedal and driving way too fast. There is a time and a place. I was incredibly lucky with my accident. In the fact that I walked away unharmed, and that I only damaged property, and not lives. Now, due to one stupid decision, there are multiple lives affected just because an inexperienced driver decided it was time to drive like an idiot.

There are other things I wished to say, but all the words have left my head at this point, so I will just leave off with, stay safe friends.