A GLIMPSE OF DEATH

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2618, 13 November 1915, Page 15

A GLIMPSE OF DEATH

HOW IT FEELS TO TURN TURTLE AT TOP SPEED. "Turning turtle" is a performance of which we have little data concerning the feelings of those involved. When an automobile leaves the straight road witJi siifficient speed to achieve a somersault, there is usually no occupant left alive ivith sufficient grasp of the situation to give a detailed account of his sensations as tho accident occurred. There comes from America, however, the story of a driver of a racing automobile whose . machine turned turtle at sixty-fivo miles an hour, and who lived to tell of tho experience. R,. H. Bacon, driver of an ill-fated Renault car in a recent race at the Delaware State Fair in that city, was faced, 60 ho tells in a dispatch to the Philadelphia "Public Ledger," with tho instant alternatives of crashing through guard-rails into a solid mass ofspectators or of locking his brakes and hovering about the confines of Eternity. Ho chose the latter, and of what happened subsequently he says:— "It is the general impression that the moving-picture film is a quick actor, but I wish to go on record as stating that tlioy appeal- slow and lagging compared with the impressions which a man facing quick and certain death may ;photograph upon his brain. There was nothing to it but a full lock. To ono who has never driven a, car I may state that tho 'full lock' is bringing the maohine to a dead stop. I was making between 62 and 63 miles an hcur at this time, so that the most unimaginative may draw a picture of what the full lock means when going at this speed, and then making the wheels and the entire machine absolutely rigid. There can be but one result—t'lio machine will turtle, orj in other words, loop the loop, and invariably land with tho driver pinned beneath its bulk. I hung on to tho car. There was a chap wlio had gained permission to ride with me. He was not my mechanician, but wanted to experience some wind-cutting. The Somersault. "The moment I realised what was about to happen I yelled at him to jump, and lie did so, leaving me to attend to the rost of the matter in about one-hundredth part of a second. I 'held on to the wheel with all m.v might as 1 locked her and saw tlio Renault lift herself up. I suddenly thought of a day when I went in swimming up in the Brandywine, and another incident when I first attempted to smoke my dad's pipe' in secrecy and at a tender age, and there were countless minor, and until then forgotten, little incidents which flashed across my mind, as if it were a week or more, instead of less time than it takes a clock to tick. . "Thou came that terrific crash. To mo it sounded as if all tho Du Pont explosives in existence had exploded right in my oars. Tho bones were all broken and split, and a piece of rib was jabbed through my lung, but I never felt anything but a stunned sensation, and my mind was working clearly and rapidly. "Of course, when Dr. Willis Linn was giving first aid, I tried to talk in gasps, but that was because of the punctured lung. To me it was merely the sensation of being short-winded. I never lost consciousness at any timo, and at this moment I still have the mental, picture of those people hanked up against the rail. There were a great many women and children, and 1 marvelled at the manner in which they stood motionless. I have since figured that things were happening so speedily in my brain that tho human body couldii't respond.

"I'm glad I locked the car. These hones will soon knit and I'll bo in tiptop shape again, but I can't sleep very well when I start thinking of what might have happened if I had not mado those four wheels rigid and turned them u pto tho sky."