I dunno if you guys saw this, but this looks pretty bad.

Pics in the post. Apparently, the guy was avoiding a deer and rolled the car. He had alot of neck/back damage requiring surgery. I wonder what speed he was going at impact to cause the roll bar to crunch in.

Rolled S

 

OH MY GOD

 

Dang man... that sucks... surgery or not, he's lucky to be alive.
-Doug

 

Stupid animal, should have hit it! seems to cause more problems avoiding them...

Glad he's alright, lucky escape

 

Notice that the driver's side headrest and "roll bar" are bent forward. Not exactly a clamshell but in the same fashion.

I guess they really aren't good enough to allow you to drive in a DE

 

They were luck to walk away from that crash... it looks like it did more than roll (ie, like maybe it bounced around some boulders or trees or something). It wasn't just a simple roll, that's for sure.

Any rollbar can be bent, just takes the right amount of force. There's been S's in similar rolls where both the windscreen and rollbars were undamaged (ie, not bent... plastic broke, etc.). From the looks of the top, it looks like the driver's side got hit from behind, a direction the rollbar is not designed to protect against.

In any event, I'm comfortable with the stock S rollcage at a DE. Of course my head is also below the rollbar height I also understand that any accident can be fatal, no matter how minor. (It's one of the reasons these damn SUV drivers on their cell phones piss me of so much. What's up with stopping in the middle of a busy intersection so you can write down your phone conversation?)

 

Geez, I wonder if he would've fared any better with a hardtop?

 

That's a good question, has anyone reported results of an S rolling with the hardtop on? I wonder how the car would have faired if would have been a coupe (from any maker).

 

An owner of a Rioyellow in Houston rolled his with the HT on. He walked away without the help of emerbency workers. It was on the Houston boards if I recall, or it may have been on the S2KCA....I saw the car on ebay as a repairable Salvage...It didn't look that bad.

 

I just spoke with Joe last night and he's doing much better. He didn't end up needing surgery after all and is no longer in the neck brace.

When he swerved to avaoid the deer he got into the ditch right at the same time that he came up on a culvert. He flipped the car five times before ending up in a corn field. I don't know how fast he was driving.

He has ordered an '06 NFR and it's sitting at the dealership waiting for him to take delivery in the Spring when the winter weather breaks (Illinois).