Guardrail Miraculously Saves ERC Rally Car From Plunging Off Cliff
This video is going to make you grateful for the guardrail which runs alongside mountain roads. Rally driver Tomasz Kasperczyk just got his hide, his co-driver and his rally car saved by one in the Canary Islands recently.
Guardrail – it really doesn’t get the credit that’s due. It takes one close call and that’s going to change the way you see these things. Tomasz Kasperczyk, who was competing in European Rally Championship at Rally Islas Canaries in the Canary Islands had a near-death experience recently. And it was the metal strip which left his and his co-driver Damian Syty alive to tell the tale later.
Helicopter footage of the incident has surfaced online and it shows Tomasz’s Ford Fiesta R5 tackling the winding mountain roads of the Canary Islands countryside at rally stage speeds. While taking a sharp right-hander, brake failure kicked in and the rest might have been all blurry for the occupants.
The rally-prepped hatchback’s driver side slammed right into the guardrail which did a surprisingly terrific job of absorbing the impact. The best part is that it caught the car which got airborne on impact in a matter of seconds. Had that not happened, it would have been a one-way trip down the valley for both the occupants.
As soon as the rally car came to a rest, Tomasz and Damian jumped out and held an “OK” sign up for the helicopter camera crew to convey that the duo is fine. The car was still dangling precariously over the cliff while the occupants managed to make their daring escape.
The guardrail crash video which has been shared by ERC through their social media channels has been picked up, shared and viewed by many already.
Tomasz Kasperczyk commented on the crash by saying,
"It was really strange for me. I put the brake [on] but nothing happened, I had no pressure and I am not happy because I was expecting a good result here. But I am really, really lucky I don’t fall down because [the drop] was really deep. After a few minutes, when I got out of the car, I see this hill and I was really, really scared. The car was not like new, it was broken, but we are okay, that is the most important thing."
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So next time, when you are driving on mountain roads, do be grateful to those who install guardrails there. Those things may spoil the view. But they certainly will come in handy while saving the day, if and when things go wrong.