Thread: Accident in Defender

A carload of teenagers lost control in the wet at the top of a 4 lane bridge and crossed the median strip into the oncoming traffic, which was me in the TD5 Defender.

I was doing 60ks and stomped the brakes. I was pretty impressed by the ABS which stopped the Deefer in a straight line without skidding in the wet. At impact I was worried that the commodore was going to come through my windscreen but it impacted at the front then spun sideways and ended up facing the same direction as me. My bullbar and front end crumpled quite well. The Defender was successfully repaired, the Commodore was a writeoff and the kids lucky to be alive...they had to squeeze out of the windows to get out.

Mark

Defenders (4wds in general) are more capable off road and less capable on road (less safe). High centre of gravity, off road tyres, solid axles and a lot heavier than sedans.

I was behind a bad crash involving a Discovery on the Hume Highway a few weeks ago, which is proof of the above. Everyone needs to slow down on the black stuff!

About 30 years ago I had the misfortune to have two S.2A written off after head on smashes. Both times it was due to the other driver moving onto my side of the road. The first writeoff was hit by a sedan which the driver stated to police was being driven at around 100kph. My landrover was shunted about 10 metres back up the road and turned at 90 degrees (I was stationary when hit). The only damage to my vehicle was a buckled chassis under the firewall. It was written off. The second accident was almost identical in that the only damage to mine was a buckled chassis. Neither vehicle was fitted with a bullbar. No one was injured in the making of these accidents. Jim

After just rolling my defender and track trailer topaz van last week, on the PDR just outside Coen. I can not stress the benefits of cargo barriers. Not only for cargo restrain but the added roll over protection. Which on face value does not appear to be much but it helps, they are life savers.
We rolled at 75/80 kmh on a slight l/h bend. I believe that the r/h/r tyre rolled off the rim after suffering a puncture that was not detected. It all happens very quickly from there on. Both the defender and van finished on there roofs. Will post some pics when I workout how and get the stomach to look at them again.I have seen on this site that without pics it did not happen, how I wish that was true.
Both myself and my wife were very luck to get out with only very minor scratchs. The help and support that was freely given to the both of us by the comunity of Coen was outstanding, true Ozy spirit.

Dale.

Good to hear you are both ok Dale....

Regards
Iain

I don't want to sound backward, As i know accidents can happen at any speed.

But was it a good idea to give the 07- defenders an extra gear 6th? As allowing people to travel at speeds of 130+ km/h in what is really still a farm vehicle a good idea?

My Tdi used to do 140 when it was new,LC's have way worse handling and brakes that don't work and they can better 160,I can see where your coming from thou. Pat

Is this post relevant on a thread about Defender safety? Anyway..

I concur with the comments about handling and keeping the wheels pointing down, and the comments about the main safety or non safety device being the driver. I'm so lucky I didn't have two serious accidents on this last trip.

The first one I didn't have was driving on the road to Mt Augusta, it was a good wide graded road but it was really slippery after some rain (it had been closed just after we passed the Murchison Roadhouse) but we carried on oblivious. It was quite a bit of fun actually going through the mud. Anyway other cars in our convoy were having their moments (XC90, Prado and D2 without the difflock) but I was just heading down the road like I was on rails feeling rather smug. Not too fast, maybe 50-60. Plenty of time too back right off for the corners, because a bit of slip isn't an issue on a stright section, right? So, suddenly the rails didnt head down the road, they headed to the bush, the hand of some higher being had turned my car right I was heading into the embankment. I kept the power on pretty much (mainly coz it happened so fast didn't have time to really back off) a bit of opposite lock and I avoided the embankment and continued on my way leaving some interesting wheel tracks. I got out of it, but it so could have gone pear shaped. A straight piece of wide road, a bit wet and a bit slippery. I had been given a lesson I should have been thankful for.

The second one, same story but this was in the dry near the west end of the Connie Sue, we'd had some piggish corrugations and I was tired. The road turned smooth and a graded mining road was just a few km ahead of me, the speed crept up. 80kph? Anyway I did actually decide to ease off before anything happened; the juice was less than the speed and the car was slowly slowing down, then I must have hit some soft sand or something but all hell broke loose. I was going bush fast; this time I could feel the forward momentum now coming from the side aching to flip that car, and it just so happened that it didn't, that's all. I got out of it and got on the radio and told everyone I reckoned it would take minutes before I got any colour and whatever speed they were doing, to take 15kph off right now. A mate following me didn't see it but he saw my tracks and he reckoned he went pale looking at them.

Rightly or wrongly I'm not too worried about somebody running into me in the Defender but I'm going to respect every dirt road regardless of quality, they can turn on you and you should be ready. That's my Defender safety advice.