Pressing F5

I’ve just woken up to the news on Radio 4 that Richard Hammond from Top Gear (BBC) has had a nasty crash whilst trying to break the British land speed record in a jet powered drag car.

From Wikipedia:

At approximately 5:45pm BST on 20 September 2006 Richard Hammond was seriously injured in a car crash while filming for Top Gear at the former RAF Elvington airfield near York. He was piloting a jet-powered Vampire car, which is theoretically capable of travelling at 370mph, in an attempt to break the UK land speed record. He was said to be travelling at 280mph at the time of the crash. He is being treated at the specialist neurological hospital Leeds General Infirmary and is currently in a serious, but stable condition.[1] BBC reports suggest that he was air-lifted from the crash scene unconscious.[1] North Yorkshire Police have said that they “received a report via the fire service of a male person trapped in an overturned jet car which had been driven on the airfield.” [3][1].

Sky News reports that he was driving a Vampire jet car powered by a Rolls Royce Orpheus Turbo-Jet Engine; the very same car that currently holds the landspeed record at 300.3mph [4]

ITV News reported that Hammond had broken the land speed record and was on a last run, filming extra scenes for Top Gear, when the accident took place. Hammond’s family are with him, along with doctors and Top Gear representatives who were there when the accident took place.

Shortly after 11:30pm, Leeds General reported that Hammond’s condition was “stable.”

A quote from Dave Ogden from Event Fire Services, present at the scene of the accident, as broadcast on Sky News that evening: “He was just doing the final run of the day – I don’t know quite what happened – but the parachute deployed. There was quite a lot of smoke and the car veered off to the right and on to the grass, and it overturned several times and it came to a halt a couple of hundred yards in front of us.”

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