Richard Hammond thanks first responders for rescuing him from car crash
Former Top Gear host Richard Hammond has thanked the emergency workers who pulled him from the wreckage of his crashed car and saved his life.
Richard Hammond has thanked the emergency workers who pulled him from the wreckage of his crashed car 20 years ago.
The 56-year-old TV presenter was critically injured during the filming of BBC motoring show Top Gear in September 2006 when the high powered dragster he was driving overturned and he was transferred to hospital via helicopter to treat serious head injuries.
Hammond has now looked back on the horrifying crash and lavished praise on the first responders who saved his life. In a post on Instagram, he wrote: "Twenty years ago today I came to an abrupt stop upside down in a Yorkshire field, convinced I was about to die.
"A front tyre had blown on the jet powered dragster I had been driving at over 300mph. I had pulled the lever to release the parachute and done my best to steer the car away from disaster, but disaster was, it seemed, my fate and having done everything I could do avert it, I gave myself over to that fate.
"I didn’t scream. It wasn’t frightening. Honestly, the only way I can convey how those few, frantic, last moments felt is that it simply occurred to me that the next thing on my To Do list was to die."
He went on to add: "I didn’t die. I was kept in a deep coma for a few weeks whilst my brain swelled inside my skull, the frontal lobe damaged when it dashed itself against the inside of that supposedly protective housing under the g-forces of deceleration after the car flipped and dug into the mossy, Yorkshire grass.
"Depending on your age and inclination to follow the news, you may have heard of the event. There was, I’m told, something of a media fuss about the ‘Jet Car Crash’.
"I wasn’t aware of it; I was in a coma and when I woke, had only a two minute memory. I am only here today to note this anniversary and write these words because of the work of the many people involved in rescuing me from the shattered car, flying me to hospital and treating me there."
The Grand Tour star added a list of names of all the emergency workers and medical staff he credits with saving him and admitted he is glad he was able to see his two daughters Isabella and Willow grow up.
Hammond concluded: "I have had so many lucky career breaks, so many amazing adventures around the world and am father to the two happiest, kindest, most wonderfully talented and loving daughters but I would have seen none of them if these people hadn’t turned up to work that day and done their job.
"Thank you all from the bottom of my heart."
