Richard Hammond has done the thing he said he would never do after being in a near-fatal crash in 2006 - by getting back behind the wheel of the car involved in the horrific collision.
The 52-year-old broadcaster suffered a brain injury and post-traumatic amnesia following the incident in which the front tyre of a Vampire Dragster failed at 319mph.
The dragster flipped over while being filmed for an episode of Top Gear, requiring Hammond to be cut free with hydraulic shears and then rushed to hospital where he spent a fortnight in a coma.
However, now he has shared footage of himself posing with the jet-powered car in a video on the DriveTribe YouTube channel, which is owned by Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, The Mirror reports.
"Hello again," he greeted the vehicle, joking: "You look in better shape than last time I saw you, anyway."
Speaking about the car, he said: "What’s odd is, I remember the last time I got in this thing, but I don’t remember getting out, so technically I’m still in it."
Hammond said viewers of the channel would see him "doing what I promised myself I would never do, and get back into the Vampire dragster that so very, very nearly killed me."
He added: "I will be doing what I swore – oh, do you know what, I’m just gonna do it now."
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Speaking out about the 2006 accident to the Radio Times in 2014, Hammond said: “It was a lot to deal with. I had a pretty tricky few years.
“The knock-on effects of the injury meant I was susceptible to depression, obsession, compulsion and paranoia, although I wasn’t aware of that at the time. It gave me an unnatural platform from which to observe my own mental state, which was exhausting.”
The video concluded with a caption that said ‘coming soon’ - so it’s not yet known whether Hammond did decide to actually drive the Vampire Dragster again.
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