[rescue] What a load of...

[Dan Sikorski]

Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>> One of my coworkers tells the story of being in a rollover accident in a 
>> van with an engine block in the back.  It'll make you think twice about 
>> using vans to move heavy objects.  Hopefully you tied that stuff down.
>>     
>
> So what happened?
>   
Funny you should ask. I never heard the whole story before, so i emailed 
him right after i sent that email and asked him about it. They were 
actually incredibly lucky... But also incredibly dumb... Here's the 
story: (He asked that some of the details be removed from the story)

"I have a picture of the van at home. It was a mid 80s conversion van. 
I was sitting behind the driver in a captains chair. I think I was a 
freshman in high school? Anyways, we were driving back from <two states 
away>, a friend of mine drove his ratty camaro up there to see his dad 
and blew the engine. 2 years go by and he wants to go pick it up. We 
took the engine out of the camaro and stuck it in the back of his moms 
van . We were gonna sneak back in the middle of the night and off load 
the engine before she found out. We hit <suburban town> about midnight 
on a Sunday night when this fucker in a <sportscar> cut us off. Well, 
that pissed the driver of our van off so he started fucking with him. 
The idiot friend of mine in the other captains chair decides to open the 
large side door of the van and throw a lighter at him. Of course, it 
explodes on his windshield. They guy gets pissed, hauls ass in front of 
us and slams on his brakes. Yes, we were going 80+. The van driver slams 
on the brakes hard, starts to swerve and loses it. The van turned around 
on the highway and started to roll. I was buckled in to my seat b/c I 
was falling asleep and falling out of the chair. We rolled about 5 times 
with that engine + trans flopping around with us. The chair I was in 
broke off the mounts with me buckled in.We ended up in the ditch, on the 
pass. side, facing traffic. I jumped out the drivers side door and fell 
into a whole bunch of broken glass. I had no shoes on, cut me up bad. 
Other than that, I was fine. The idiot friend that wasnt buckled in 
couldnt answer simple questions from the paramedics, so they took him 
to the hospital. He was fine. The engine didnt hurt anyone, but I had 
grease marks on my shorts from the trans yolk! So it did hit me, just 
not hard. When we left on the trip, we stocked a cooler full of apples, 
oranges, banana, sandwiches, etc Well, we never touched it. It sat in 
the van and cooked in water for three days. When the van rolled, it 
dumped out on us. On top of that, the dirt that was flying around from 
the carpet was all over the place. So I looked like I was covered in 
mud, and stunk like rotten food."

He added that the entire rear of the van was torn up from rolling and 
having the engine block bouncing around, and the cops caught up with the 
sportscar driver, but nobody got a ticket for the accident because none 
of them told the whole story. This was about 20 years ago.

-Dan Sikorski