For anyone and everyone familiar with the British motoring television program Top Gear, it was well covered in the news that, in 2006, one of the hosts of the program, Richard Hammond, was severely injured while test running a jet engine-powered car at an airstrip in York. This is well documented from both his point of view and his wife Mindy's point of view in the excellent book On The Edge: My Story.
Host Richard Hammond talks about the 2006 crash that nearly took his life.
Shared as part of a YouTube channel called DriveTribe, which was founded by him, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, Richard Hammond recounts what happened that fateful day in September 2006. At the time, he was testing a jet engine-powered car called Vampire at the RAF Elvingdon airbase near York. It was related to filming for Top Gear. The car reached 320 mph. Despite sustaining severe injuries, he was able to return to Top Gear in 2007
As part of a video on the DriveTribe channel, Richard Hammond shares what happened. The video was filmed in the Lake District and he recounted what could have been his final moments. "In hospital, in intensive care, things were apparently not looking very good, but I didn't know, there was a lot of morphine floating around my system. I finally woke and I shared with my wife Mindy a dream I'd been having. A really, really vivid one, probably, partly, on a count of the morphine. And in my mind I'd been walking these hills here in the Lake District, overlooking Buttermere. I was having a lovely time strolling along and gradually I got a growing sense of you know when you're in trouble. (It) grew and grew until eventually in my dream I turned back, I didn't walk around this tree and carry on and then I woke."
When he woke up and told his wife, Mindy, who is a newspaper columnist, about the dream, she told him what was going on in the hospital room at the time. He said "She'd been called into the intensive care and been told 'Mrs. Hammond I'm really sorry things aren't looking good.'"
"I was on full life support and breathing apparatus, she was told it's not looking good we think we're going to lose him." His wife asked if shouting at him would work. "Apparently she roared and screamed and swore at me 'don't you dare die' and that's when I turned back from this tree in my dream and that's when I woke. My last thought took me somewhere I love and somewhere I'm happy. So I'm not scared of this old tree. I pass it regularly, most months I come up here and walk, and every time I pass it, I do feel comforted."
"I know it's where I'll go. It's still here and I'm still here. But it does speak of the importance of place and the joy of being connected with a place." When the video went viral, Richard Hammond appeared on BBC Radio 4's program where Evan Davis asked why he came out with this personal story, 16 years later. "It's not often you get to be really personal and share quite an intimate story I suppose, but I hoped it would connect with people. It was a big thing in my life and because it's about a brain injury, that affects a lot of people. If it connects with anybody, it's worth telling."
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