Date:         Tue, 2 May 95 20:51:51 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         ja@decws3.coe.wvu.edu (John Anderson)
Subject:      Re: back from the dead

> Glad to hear everybody's safe, sorry for your Westy...
> 
> We've always felt that the 'Bricks' were just about the safest
> form of transportation, aside from Suburbans and 18-wheelers.
> 
> Cetin
> 
First, let me say, I'm glad Dan's family is alright as well.  As to
Vanagon safety, I'd like to say from personal experience, that
it probably gets an undeserved bad rap.  I rolled our '86 back
in '90 or so.  It was a bad day, I left on a 50 mile trip, and
it was snowing slightly, about 25 miles into it, total
white out conditions, but I had driven in similar situations in
the van before with no problem so like an idiot I kept going, I
forgot that then I had had chains on which I did not unfortunately
have.  I crested a hill as it got really bad and decided to pull
off, a tragic error.  Letting off the throttle a little too abrubtly
on what turned out to be glare ice on the interstate, the back
end came round viciously, before I could correct, the left rear tire
hit a drain in the median, caught and I went tumbling on the vans
side, 1 1/2 times over, landed on the passenger side.  In my defense
I popped my seatbelt, stepped out through the now vacant windshield
opening and watched 10 other cars slide into each other and off
the road over the same stretch of sheer ice.  But back to the van,
if it had landed on it's wheels, I'm sure I could have driven it out.
No real frame damage, I could look at the frame very well from it's
position, suspension looked OK, wrecker came tipped it over, and
pulled it out.  Damage was really minimal considering I had been
going 40 mph or so, it looked like somebody had pushed, the whole
edge along the drivers side roofline, six inches towards the passenger
side, but deformation was above the belt line only.  Oddly enough a
friends family rolled their '86 Syncro within a week with 6 passengers
in the vehicle, all sustained no injuries.  It was funny because both
sat in the dealers lot, side by side, one deformed one direction, the
other deformed the opposite direction, I got pictures somewhere.  Anyway
I personally feel the VW transporter design is quite safe, always
buckle up and you will do fine, though I still would never want
to head on anything doing over 15 mph to find out what happens to
one's legs.

John Anderson
ja@coe.wvu.edu
'71 Westy, '90 Corrado G60