While you’ll never hear an automaker publicly talking about incidents that resulted in severe injuries or death (obviously…), companies do like to share true stories about how their vehicles helped protect occupants in the case of real-life accidents.
Mercedes-Benz is one of them and it has released photos from a recent accident and the story behind it. It involves an unnamed driver of a 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 HYBRID Sedan who was travelling on a winding mountain road on the outskirts of Yosemite National Park in August.
He told Mercedes that an oncoming SUV forced him to swerve his car around a sharp curve and go over a cliff plummeting some 400 feet (122 meters) to the bottom after the road’s shoulder gave way.
Judging from the damages seen on the S-Class, the car doesn’t look like it tumble down, and instead, it likely rolled down on its wheels – if the first scenario played out, the scars would have been obvious on the car’s body.
The man said that the car came to a stop some 50 feet above a creek. “I don’t know what my thinking process was, but I decided to get out and start walking downhill,” he said. “So I opened the door and hopped out, dropping seven feet down to a dry creek bed and then tumbling another 40 feet or so.”
“Somewhere down the hill, after I was done clipping off treetops, I came to with the car lodged between two trees. The first thing I recall was an mbrace operator asking me if I was ok. I didn’t answer, but then I heard her on the line to CHP and telling them there’d been an accident and she could hear someone breathing.”
“You know, it was such a horseshoe turn that I don’t think the other driver knew what happened. Though they were definitely over the double line, I’m not mad at them. I was a big city cop for 15 years—stabbed twice, shot four times—and people say I have nine lives. I still have plenty left,” he added.
Photos via Mercedes-Benz USA
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