WHO Joe Haughton, 23, assistant manager, Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Ossining, N.Y.
WHAT 1994 Pontiac Grand Am GT
I've had one car for every year I've been driving, and I got my license at 18. The cars come and go. I junk them, sell them, crash them. If you ask me, there is a car for every phase of a person's life. These days I feel lucky to be alive, and, hopefully, the Grand Am will help keep me that way.
I am a speed junkie. I need the excitement, the adrenaline rush that driving fast gives me. I like the way I feel in motion. I used to race a lot ? not for money, just for fun. I'd pull up next to somebody, and they'd be like, "Yo, man, let's take it for a mile or so." And then we'd just go!
One time, in Manhattan, I raced a BMW M5 down the middle of Fifth Avenue in my friend's Prelude. If you'd seen me weaving in and out of traffic, you'd have thought, "This kid has seen `The Fast and the Furious' too many times."
On the night of April 8, 2001, I was behind the wheel of that same Prelude. I had two friends in the car with me. We'd been racing on the Taconic Parkway. I was still hyped up when I exited at Pinesbridge Road in Ossining, so I decided to see if I could beat my best time from the Maryknoll Convent to the end of the road about three miles away. I don't remember the deer in the road. I don't remember getting in the car that night, or the four weeks that followed. It's as if someone pushed a delete button and erased a month of my life. I'm basing my story on what friends and the police told me.
When I swerved to avoid the deer, my tire caught the lip of the road and the car spun. I hit a telephone pole at 98 miles an hour, bounced off a tree and slammed into a second pole. The first impact flung me forward and my seatbelt caught. The second impact snapped me back so hard that the seat back collapsed and I was ejected out the rear window. I was blown right out of my pants. My head hit a parked car. They found me 45 yards away and my pants in the driver's seat.
My friends walked away, but I took the brunt of it. I fractured my C-2 and C-3 vertebrae and snapped the wings off two lumbar disks. I fractured my pelvis and my right femur and shattered my left leg to the point where I can still feel gaps in it today. I suffered internal bleeding and head trauma. I was in a coma for 13 days. The doctors told my mother to prepare for the worst. I healed pretty quickly, considering. My doctor said my recovery was so amazing that he took a sample of my DNA for research. But like a car that has been fixed up after a bad accident, my body will never be the same. I'm held together with titanium and nails.
I left the rehab center six weeks later, and three days after that my friends wheeled me out to my mother's car. I hoisted myself in (my arms were still strong) and took us all for a little drive.
I've bought two cars since the accident. The first was a 1991 Isuzu Rodeo. I was walking ? but not very well ? and I figured an automatic would be easier on my legs. And I knew it would not tempt me to go fast. A year later, I was working at a body shop, and the mechanic next door had this teal Grand Am for sale. It had only 50,000 miles on it, and the body was in good shape. It's my younger sister's favorite car, so I bought it for her for when she was home from college. I paid $2,000. Then the Rodeo died, and I took over the Grand Am. Afterward, I discovered that it can only go so fast. Its computer is programmed to shut off the fuel to the engine if you go more than 108 m.p.h. But I can live with it. It starts every day, it goes good, and everything works. That is all I need right now.
I've slowed down a lot. I've lost that need to hold it on the edge. I'm a lot shakier, always second-guessing myself. I cut things close, but I'm more hesitant, and most of the time I just don't do it. I understand my limitations. If I want to go crazy fast, I play Gran Turismo 2 and 3 for a few hours. I have a car in my virtual garage that can go 274. I won't lie and say I never speed. But I try to keep it under 100. And I still wear those pants.
As told to Dana White.
