Richard Hammond’s friends are terrified to get into a car with him when he is driving.
Richard Hammond’s friends are terrified to get into a car with him when he is driving
The 54-year-old TV star gained a reputation for being accident-prone after having several big crashes on ‘Top Gear’ and ‘The Grand Tour’, and has now revealed his pals are put on edge when he gets behind the wheel.
During an appearance on ‘The Paul Chowdhry PudCast’, he told the host: “Some of them get anxious.
“What’s worse is when somebody else [is] driving and I’m in the car … because it tends to go one of two ways.
“Either they demonstrate I’m going to driving normally, or ‘Wahey, here we go’, and they overcook it. That can get alarming.”
Famously, Richard was involved in a near-fatal crash in 2006 when his jet-powered dragster travelling at 319 miles-per-hour spun off and toppled over while filming for ‘Top Gear’.
The accident left the presenter in a coma two weeks, though he luckily made a full recovery.
Even so, Richard admitted he is triggered by certain sounds that remind him of the incident.
Speaking to his daughter Izzy during their ‘Who We Are Now’ podcast, he said: “The only thing that really sticks in my mind was the noise because of the impact of a car hitting concrete and that’s the thing that actually like rattled my brain.
“I fly helicopters but I don’t like flying jet rangers, because the way they start sounds exactly the same way that the jet car started.”
The TV star then recounted how he tried to hit his teammate instead of the concrete, because he knew he “was going to die” if he landed on the ground while going at such a high speed.
He explained: “It was real time and it was me panicking to understand what I could do, I tried to hit my teammate, missed him, because I knew that hitting the concrete at that speed I was going to die.
“I hit the concrete, bent the wheel in half, like all the crazy things you hear about, kids picking up cars because their parents are trapped underneath.
“But actually, it was the split moment of numbers up. I was completely calm, I’d done everything I could do.
“I’ve pulled the parachute, I’d steered, braked, it was going upside down, there’s no roof and I thought, ‘Oh, checking out now.’ No panic at that point, panic had gone, I’d done everything.”
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