gif of the hamsters crash

[posol]

The Sun Online - News: First photos of Hammond crash

 

[smarty009]

wow...that had to tickle

 

[Sabz5150]

Hamster's got some stones of solid diamond to even get in the seat of one of those things!

Glad to see he's recovered and back to his usual Top Gear goodness.

 

[TurboMirage]

wow.

 

[E_SolSi]

dayummmm

 

[phunky.buddha]

I'm glad he's ok!

 

[DarkHand]

Interview with his wife here:

I knew that the first 48 hours were critical for Richard but at 4am he started to deteriorate.
The nurse was performing regular "observation tests" to gauge his reactions, trying to get him to open his eyes, squeeze her fingers, wiggle his toes and talk. But nothing was working on his left hand side which was a big concern.

The nurses never say exactly what's going on, but there's this unspoken thing - you look into their eyes and you just know it's really bad.
Because Richard didn't respond the nurse had to cause him pain by jabbing a blunt instrument into a tender area at the top of his nose. It was horrific to watch and I begged her not to hurt him.

I could tell the nurse was concerned because she wasn't getting any reaction from him and I was becoming more scared. It was touch and go.
I asked her: "Would it help if I shouted at him like I do when he's drunk?" I was worried that I would disturb the other patients on the intensive care ward but she said: "Yeah, if you can get him to do something, shout."

I bellowed at him: "Richard, you bloody well squeeze her fingers because it's bloody important!"

There was a tiny little squeeze and I thought: "Thank God." After that he started to improve.

A couple of times Richard opened his eyes which was heart-stopping for me. But he looked blankly across me and closed them again. I couldn't clear the thought from the back of my mind he might not recognise me. I tried to be upbeat and talk to everyone.

Richard kept pursing his lips as if he was kissing and I said: "Look, he's dreaming about Angelina Jolie." We were joking around the bed, hoping he could hear and trying to trigger some reaction. Sometimes I felt a glimmer that he was listening.

He was an awful patient and did some terrible things like pulling all his tubes out.

It took three people to hold him down. He even ripped out his ventilator and I spent ages staring intently at his chest to make sure he was breathing. I soon learned every time he picked his nose, he was about to do something.

At one stage when I popped out of the room briefly, Jeremy ran out and grabbed me, saying: "He's said something." When I went back in the ward, he looked at me and said: "Hello baby" - but that completely exhausted him and he slipped back to sleep again.

When he started to do simple things like squeeze fingers during the tests it was fantastic. Then the doctors moved on to questions like: "Do you know your name? Do you know your wife's name? What day is it?"

I thought: "I don't even know what day it is, so how do they expect him to know?"

Two days after the accident, he pulled out his catheter, and, with two people helping him, walked to the toilet. The same day he ate a bowl of cereal.

By then, he seemed quite lucid and to look at him you'd think there was nothing wrong with him. But if you spoke to him for more than a minute you'd realise he wasn't making sense and was going around in circles.

It seems ludicrous how quickly Richard improved and soon he was well enough to be transferred by air ambulance to a private hospital in Bristol, which made it easier for me to nip home and see the girls. ... If he can survive something of that magnitude, he'll be OK. He is a very good driver and has done a lot of training. Had the worst happened, Richard would have come to his end doing the one thing he always wanted to do since the age of five. How many people realise a dream like that? At no point would I have blamed anyone.

An interview with Richard afterwards from here:

I was upside down inhaling a field. My nose and eyes were full of earth. I’d gone ploughing on my head. It was 50-50 what was going to happen. I may have been dead, I may not have woken up… Doctors use a point system. Fifteen is normal, three is a flatline. I was a three. I was that close to being dead. My mind was like an office that had been utterly ransacked. All the filing cabinets were knocked over. It was a total mess and I couldn’t find my way around anymore. My own mind was like a foreign place. I didn’t know where anything was. It was like everybody had messed up the furniture, nothing was familiar. Like somebody had ripped my head apart. It was utterly terrifying — the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. It made me panic. It made me desperate. Basically, I was mad as a bag of snakes.

Lego saved my life. It’s really good therapy for a brain injury. I was a Lego fiend when I was eight and, suddenly, it was all I wanted to do again. James May sent me a pack of Supercars Top Trumps. I played with Mindy [his wife] and we were addicted. While I couldn’t remember the day, my name or the doctor’s name, I could remember the specific capacity of a Pagani Zonda.

Incredible how close he came to dying or being a vegetable. Lego saved him!

 

[E_SolSi]

Had the worst happened, Richard would have come to his end doing the one thing he always wanted to do since the age of five. How many people realise a dream like that? At no point would I have blamed anyone.

holy shit... you'd never hear something like that in the US

 

[phunky.buddha]

Wow

 

[posol]

he's got a good wife.

 

[Celerity]

" While I couldn’t remember the day, my name or the doctor’s name, I could remember the specific capacity of a Pagani Zonda."

If I'm ever in the hospital like this, someone in CT has to come by and ask me questions about cars or computers. Or quantum physics. I'll do that too.

we at HS need a living will like this.

 

[posol]

word.

when i'm old and senial and can't remember my own name, i still want to know that a b16a3 has 160bhp

 

[Celerity]

"Senile"

 

[posol]

it's starting already.....

 

[Celerity]

How many times have you put "b" or "pissedoffsol", or at least, started to ... on an application or something ?

I actually answered the phone today as "Cel"

 

[posol]

well, B is the start of my name, so it happens all the time
but, never POS

 

[DarkHand]

I learned not to read forums while answering the phone... A few years ago when I was still the receptionist here at work I answered the phone: "Good morning MCI, I can't even play single player half-life."

I got all the way to the beginning of the word 'Half' before I caught myself.