Sparrow Crash 5/6/2002

On 5/6/2002 I made a rather dumb mistake while driving my Sparrow home. I let the car go too fast down my driveway. I think I should describe my driveway. It is about 700' long, and this part is downhill (steep enough that coasting gains quite a bit of speed), curved, tilted, dirt and gravel, with a significant grassy hump in the middle. So when I noticed the Sparrow was going too fast, I applied the brakes. (Should I mention that it had been raining so the grass was very slippery, and the dirt was mud?) Applying the brakes was a mistake. The rear wheel (on wet grass) locked, and then proceeded to slide off the grass hump (remember the tilt to the driveway I mentioned?). This put the car at a significant angle to the driveway, and I couldn't steer out of it. So it proceeded to run into the embankment (sliding sidways/forward at the time). This slowed the front of the car rather abruptly, so it pivoted farther around. With the wheels now sliding sidways, the front end dragging on the embankment was too much. It fell over onto it's left side and slid to a stop. The impact with the ground broke my left collar bone (probably helped by me weighing 260 lbs).

The pictures below show how the Sparrow ended up. (Luckily it didn't block the driveway, so my mom could drive me to the hospital.)

We used my front end loader to pick it up by running a nylow tow strap through the windows. I really didn't want to just tip it back up, as slamming down on it's suspension may cause more damage.

The total damage to the Sparrow wasn't too bad. Left sideview mirror was broken off, left front fender was ripped, several scrapes and gouges in the left side fiberglass, and a few seams cracked. The worst part was the main drive pulley got badly chipped (probably hit a rock). I replaced the fender, mirror, and drive pulley. Then I had a fiberglass shop fix the other damage.

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