Monday 10 August 2009

Is Richard Hammond fit to drive a car?

Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond crashed his treasured £110,000 supercar yesterday – but this time walked away unscathed. The BBC star was involved in the four-car pile-up after allegedly hitting the back of a Nissan as he approached a roundabout.

Hammond damaged the part of his brain which controls spatial awareness, and admits that he now finds it difficult to park a car.

‘Someone braked sharply in front of him and then a number of cars went into the back of each other. Richard was at the back of the line and he received no damage to his rear end but the front was in a pretty bad way.

[In other words, he was driving recklessly close to the car in front, failing to leave enough space in the event of the need to stop suddenly.]

Hammond, nicknamed ‘Hamster’, was shaken but walked away from his Morgan AeroMax without any injuries from the crash near the village of Over, in Gloucestershire, at lunchtime.

But it was his car that came off the worse after suffering thousands of pounds worth of damage. The Thirties-style 170mph car looks like a Batmobile and has a 4.8-litre BMW V8 engine.