Supples’ Pub

Top Gear host till not alright 18 months after crash

During this period of shows is when host Richard Hammond crashed a jet-powered dragster going 288 mph. Though he suffered significant injuries including head trauma, Hammond was back on the Top Gear set just four short months after the crash. He now admits that was "much too early."
The Daily Mail reports that Hammond, a.k.a. Hamster, has since struggled with some degree of suicidal depression and still suffers from memory loss and spacial awareness issues that make simple tasks like parking a car difficult.

As an auto enthusiast and acceleration junkie (note I said acceleration, not speed), it is easy to get wrapped up in the world of high performance. What isn’t so easy to get wrapped up in, however, is the high costs that come with this world. When we slide into the driver’s seat of a high powered vehicle, whether it be a muscle car, a rally car, or most motorcycles, we accept the fact that we are taking at least a little more risk than your average driver. Driving styles aside, you generally compromise some amount of safety for greater performance; as always everything is a give and take. The closer you are to the edge, the easier it is to fall off it.

However when your odds run out, that risk brings with it a cost that most of the time, we don’t acknowledge. While most of us don’t strap into jet-powered dragsters going nearly 300mph, we may slip that rear end out a little on a turn, or get a full throttle run down the highway entrance ramp, or anything else ranging from innocuous fun to downright dangerous.

But what happens when innocuous fun doesn’t take into account the X factor, the thing that you can’t control and that inevitably catches up with you. Well, that’s part of the risk we say. You’ve got to pay to play. I take XYZ precautions, but in the end I live closer to the edge and if shit happens, it happens.

What about others in our lives? What about the people who care about us or depend on us in one way or another? What would they say as we take our lives in our hands on the road, and proceed to add more throttle to it?

My life has taken on a whirlwind of changes over what is nearly now two months. Before my world as I knew it changed completely, I had taken certain things for granted. It is incredibly easy in any aspect of life to lose perspective of the big picture, for getting wrapped up in the day-to-day details.

But lately whether it has been playfully arguing with a friend over motorcycle safety vs. performance, or learning of the sadness & loss caused by an auto enthusiast’s death, lived by someone I care about, I at least have a glimpse of that perspective which can be oh so important.

I realize I’m not saying anything earthshattering or revolutionary here. But I hope that if maybe this rambling of morbid and dramatic writing helps us gear heads/speed freaks/etc keep at least a little better eye on that overall perspective, maybe we will all be around a little longer - for both ourselves, and our loved ones.

With my mind a little clearer from dumping it out in this post, I’m going to pack up and head out - with more mellow tunes playing and a lighter foot, trying to see how many MPG I can squeeze out of this 400HP pig wearing tires two sizes too small.