Richard Hammond Death Crash Cause Discovered | Top Gear Presenter Almost Killed By A Nail
An official BBC Report has been published in to the possible causes of Richard Hammond’s almost fatal crash last year. Hammond, commonly known as The Hamster, was driving a rocket car similar to the Vampire when while travelling at 288 miles an hour, the right hand tyre blew out and he almost lost his life.
It has now been revealed that a nail in the tyre was the likely cause of the crash which resulted in Richard being airlifted to hospital and suffering a serious brain injury.
It was a terrifying crash which could quite easily have killed the guy, and it’s a miracle he ended up fit enough to present the new series of Top Gear a few months later where they showed the crash as above. I looked at the crash in more detail back in February so click here to read that post.
The BBC report says:-
“It is a distinct possibility that the accident could have been prevented if the tyres had been checked in between earlier practice runs.”
“The indirect cause was the inability to spot the damage to the tyre, possibly due to either the lack of an adequate checking procedure or inadequate implementation of the procedure by PLE as the ‘experts’ with sole responsibility for the safety of the car; and to a much lesser extent Top Gear not having an assurance system to ensure that the safety checks were being performed on the day.”
I’m glad Richard Hammond walked away from this but I do wonder where this will leave Top Gear. I assume it will be back for a new series, but I wonder if the near miss that was this high speed crash will prevent the presenters and producers taking such risks in the future.
I love the show but for it to work you need certain elements to be kept. The presenters are all great and play off each other brilliantly, so they should stay. And also you need cars, lots of them, going fast.
While I did find some of the situations and set ups during the last series to be a bit false, the interplay between Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May was brilliant throughout. If those high speed races, and challenges cease to be a part of Top Gear, and Health and Safety take over, then I fear the show will lose a lot of its spark.
Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen.
Richard Hammond, Top Gear, James May, Jeremy Clarkson, UK, British, BBC, The Hamster, Vampire, Car Crash, Crash Video
September 26th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIt was a terrifying crash which could quite easily have killed the guy, and it’sa miracle he ended up fit enough to present the new series of Top Gear a few months later where they showed the crash as above. … [...]