Read and you be the judge: In November of 2001 I got to close to a soft shoulder on a Forest Service road. This was on a deep fill over a large culvert about 40 feet down about a 30 degree slope. The right rear of my '85 Westy went off and even though only traveling about 20 mph or less we rolled over onto the right side, then up onto the top, then onto the left side, stopped because we came up against a tree. I was unharmed except for a scratch on the top of my head where a 'flying object' hit me. My passenger ended up with two cracked vertebrae, is all right now, spent four months in a back brace. The Westy was totaled. Most of the body damage was caused pulling it out. We were both wearing the issue seat belts. This was not a very violent crash, but a nice slow rollover. But keep in mind, going down the bank, the first part of the full rotation was about 120 degrees because of the angle of the bank. We hit pretty hard on that first landing. Without seat belts on we would have both been thrown all over the inside and I'm sure the injuries would have been much more severe. BTW, I had a lot of gear loose in the back of the Westy (we had been out to watch the Leonids Meteor Shower with a bunch of other people). Since we had very little forward motion at the time of the rollover, nothing big ended up on top of us or hitting us, but I guarantee that anything I'm not willing to get hit in the head with is now enclosed or tied down (cargo net, bungee cords, and eyebolts) when traveling. Lesson learned the hard way. |
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