Posting John Guinn's detail account of accident. (archive)

-----email excerpt from John Guinn to me 7/27/99-----
One of my best friends, Mike , a Z3 registry member from Cameron, was involved in a terrible accident in downtown Austin two weeks ago. He struck a bus broadside at high speed, after having missed a stop sign. (Unfortunately, the stop sign was obscured by a temporary building erected at the corner, next to a construction site.) Mike was critically injured, and remains in serious shape. His six-month-old Montreal Blue Z3 2.3 was utterly destroyed. Mike was supposed to come with me to homecoming.

Mike was always good about wearing his belt, but he forgot it that time. That only makes his injuries that much more senseless and frustrating. While Mike was terribly injured, his passenger wore her belt--and suffered only a seven-stitch cut on her hand. She was released shortly after the accident. No one else was injured.

In a way, it is relieving to see just how safe our little cars are. Mike hit the bus at high speed, in a perfectly perpendicular impact ("T-bone"). Both he and his passenger suffered the exact same impact, and the safety engineered into the car worked perfectly. The hood crumpled perfectly, the engine didn't fly back into the passenger compartment, etc. In fact, other than the damage from Mike's unbelted lower body to the lower dash, the passenger compartment was completely intact.
-----end of email-----

p.s. Sorry for misrecalling the details and double posting.

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