State trooper says man’s life spared by matter of one foot

A matter of one foot may have saved a man’s life Thursday night when he was thrown from his car after hitting a tree on Crisp Springs Road.
‘The difference between nearly being able to walk away with non-critical injuries and being dead at the scene was, in my opinion, only about a foot,’ said Highway Patrol Sgt. Billy Prater of the Thursday night crash that injured Jordan Rummage, 20. ‘It’s not the impact that generally kills you. It’s the change in velocity and a lot of that has to do with how the vehicle crashes into either another vehicle, or in this case, a tree.’
Prater said Rummage was northbound on Crisp Springs Road when he lost control of his 1996 Honda Civic and ran off the road, overcorrecting and then re-crossing the blacktop before crossing a private drive, rotating and hitting a tree with the driver’s side of his car. The crash ejected Rummage through the driver’s door, which was forced open by impact. Rummage was not wearing a seatbelt and his airbags had not been reconnected following an earlier deployment.
The victim was found by a nearby tree, his most serious complaint being leg pain. He was airlifted from the scene by LifeForce helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
Sgt. Prater explained the car struck the tree just behind the driver’s seat. The angle, he noted, dissipated the velocity of the impact. Had the tree impacted one foot further forward, the dissipation would have been much less and the forces could have been lethal.
‘Sometimes it can come down to inches,’ Prater said.