Accident Report

This one needs an introduction, so you won't be lost at the beginning. This man was in an accident at work, so he filled out an insurance claim. The insurance company contacted him and asked for more information. This was his response:

"I am writing in response to your request for additional information, for block number 3 of the accident reporting form. I put 'poor planning' as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust the following detail will be sufficient. I am an amateur radio operator and on the day of the accident, I was working alone on the top section of my new 80-foot tower. When I had completed my work, I discovered that I had, over the course of several trips up the tower, brought up about 300 pounds of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the now unneeded tools and material down by hand, I decided to lower the items down in a small barrel by using the pulley attached to the gin pole at the top of the tower. Securing the rope at ground level, I went to the top of the tower and loaded the tools and material into the barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow decent of the 300 pounds of tools."

"You will note in block number 11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh only 155 pounds. Due to my surprise of being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rather rapid rate of speed up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken collarbone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold onto the rope in spite of my pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of tools hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel."

"Devoid of the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed approximately 20 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in block number 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the 40-foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, and the lacerations of my legs and lower body. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell onto the pile of tools and, fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the tools, in pain, unable to stand and watching the empty barrel 80 feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind. I let go of the rope..."

A man was splitting seasoned wood early one autumn in preparation for the quickly approaching winter. One after another, he would drive his sharp axe through a log, then toss the split wood onto the pile. He was making light work of the logs when he came to one with a particularly large diameter.

Feeling overzealous, he decided to split the log anyway. He lined up his shot, and brought the axe down dead-center, only to bury the axe blade deep in the girthy log without splitting it. With a swift action, he jerked up on the handle to free the axe for another swing. In doing so, the log scooted forward about a foot before the axe broke free.

Rather than move the heavy log back into place, the man stepped forward a foot to take another swing. The second swing met with the same result as the first, as did the third attempt, the fourth, and so on. In his relentless determination to split the unsplittable, the man did not notice that he and the log had traveled some twenty-five feet across the yard, and were now positioned beheath the clothesline.

As he brought the axe down for another whack at the log, the axe head caught the clothesline, which acted in the same manner as a bow string. The axe had barely touched the top of the log when the clothesline reached its maximum draw, propelling the axe head back toward the man at an ungodly velocity. It found its mark right between his eyes.

Fortunately, the blunt side of the axe head made contact, and rather than killing him, it merely collapsed his sinus and fractured his skull. He recovered, and learned a very important lesson: Always be aware of your surroundings when hurling a sharp object through the air with great force.

A fellow from Michigan buys himself a brand-new $30,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee for Christmas. He goes down to his favorite bar and celebrates by tossing down a few too many brews with his buddies. In one of those male-bonding rituals, five of them decide to take his new vehicle for a test drive on a duck hunting expedition. They load up the Jeep with the dog, the guns, the decoys, and the beer, and head out to a nearby lake.

Now, it's the dead of winter, and of course the lake is frozen, so they need to make a hole in the ice to create a natural landing area for the ducks and decoys. It is common practice in Michigan to drive your vehicle out onto the frozen lake, and it is also common (if slightly illegal) to make a hole in the ice using dynamite. Our fellows have nothing to worry about on that score, because one member of the party works for a construction team, and happens to have brought some dynamite along. The stick has a short 20-second fuse.

The group is ready for some action. They're all set up. Their shotguns are loaded with duck pellets, and they have beer, warm clothes and a hunting dog. Still chugging down a seemingly bottomless supply of six-packs, the group considers how to safely dynamite a hole through the ice. One of these rocket scientists points out that the dynamite should explode at a location far from where they are standing. Another notes the risk of slipping on the ice when running away from a burning fuse. So they eventually settle on a plan to light the fuse and throw the dynamite out onto the ice.

There is a bit of contention over who has the best throwing arm, and eventually the owner of the Jeep wins that honor. Once that question is settled, he walks about 20 feet further out onto the ice and holds the stick of dynamite at the ready while one of his companions lights the fuse with a Zippo. As soon as he hears the fuse sizzle, he hurls it across the ice at a great velocity and runs in the other direction.

Unfortunately, a member of another species spots his master's arm motions and comes to an instinctive decision. Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the beer, the guns and the dog? Yes, the dog: a trained Black Labrador, born and bred for retrieving, especially things thrown by his owner. As soon as the stick leaves his hand, the dog sprints across the ice, hell-bent on wrapping his jaws around the enticing stick-shaped object.

Five frantic fellows immediately begin hollering at the dog, trying to get him to stop chasing the dynamite. Their cries fall on deaf ears. Before you know it, the retriever is headed back to his owner, proudly carrying the stick of dynamite with the burning 20-second fuse. The group continues to yell and wave their arms while the happy dog trots towards them. In a desperate act, its master grabs his shotgun and fires at his own dog.

The gun is loaded with duck shot, and confuses the dog more than it hurts him. Bewildered, he continues towards his master, who shoots at man's best friend again. Finally comprehending that his owner has become insane, the dog runs for cover with his tail between his legs. And the nearest cover is right under the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Boom! The dog and the Jeep are blown to bits, and sink to the bottom of the lake, leaving a large ice hole in their wake. The stranded men stand staring at the water with stupid looks on their faces, and the owner of the Jeep is left to explain the misadventure to his insurance company. Needless to say, they determined that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is not covered under their policy, and the owner is still making $400 monthly payments on his brand-new Jeep at the bottom of the lake.

This guy pushed his motorcycle from the patio into his living room, where he began to clean the engine with some rags and a bowl of gasoline, all in the comfort of his own home. When he finished, he sat on the motorcycle and decided to give his bike a quick start and make sure everything was still OK. Unfortunately, the bike started in gear, and crashed through the glass patio door with him still clinging to the handlebars.

His wife had been working in the kitchen. She came running at the fearful sound, and found him crumpled on the patio, badly cut from the shards of broken glass. She called 911, and the paramedics carried the unfortunate man to the Emergency Room.

Later that afternoon, after many stitches had pulled her husband back together, the wife brought him home and put him to bed. She cleaned up the mess in the living room, and dumped the bowl of gasoline in the toilet.

Shortly thereafter, her husband woke up, lit a cigarette, and went into the bathroom for a much-needed relief break. He sat down and tossed the cigarette into the toilet, which promptly exploded because the wife had not flushed the gasoline away. The explosion blew the man through the bathroom door.


The wife heard a loud explosion and the terrible sound of her husband's screams. She ran into the hall and found her husband lying on the floor with his trousers blown away and burns on his buttocks. The wife again ran to the phone and called for an ambulance.

The same two paramedics were dispatched to the scene. They loaded the husband on the stretcher and began carrying him to the street. One of them asked the wife how the injury had occurred. When she told them, they began laughing so hard that they dropped the stretcher, and broke the guy's collarbone.

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS, President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On March 23,1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect, indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window which killed him instantly.

Neither the shooter nor the descender was aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide."

That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, whence the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. Thed old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

Michael Anderson Godwin was a lucky murderer whose death sentence had been commuted to life in prison. Ironically, he was sitting on the metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix the TV set when he bit down on a live wire and electrocuted himself.

A rather impressionable student of kung fu listened with rapt attention when his instructor dramatically informed the class, "Now that you have reached this level in your training, you can kill wild animals with your bare hands!"

The martial arts trainee took the statement as gospel, and headed to the Melbourne zoo to test his mettle with the wildest animal of all: the lion. In the dead of night, he slipped into the zoo, leapt into the lion enclosure, and engaged a suitable king of the jungle in combat.

He would probably have lost a one-on-one fight, but he never got to try. His naive fight plan didn't account for the enthusiasm of the lion's pride for a tender intruder; nor did it give sufficient weight to the possibility that his instructor didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Zoo employees found his remains -- two arms and hands -- the following morning, with shreds of red fur grasped tightly in his fingers.

David, 46, was sliding down an Italian ski slope one night, riding on padding that he had removed from the safety barriers at the bottom of the run. It did not occur to him that it might be dangerous to sled down the same slope from which he had stolen protective padding.

Sauze d'Oulx is one of five villages that make up the "Milky Way" ski area in northern Italy. Popular with British skiers, the resort is known for its party atmosphere. A ski resort spokesperson said, "The men had all been drinking when they tore off the padding, and ironically..."

...they careened straight into the bare barriers at the bottom of the piste (groomed slope). David died from head and chest injuries inflicted by the unpadded metal. Two of his friends survived with medical attention. Another Darwin Award candidate is still missing after he wandered away "bloodied and distressed."

Most rutting contests involve two male mammals, like the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis dallis), which ram into each other at high speed in order to impress a female sheep and win the right to procreate. These mammals tend to have unusually thick skulls and extra fluid surrounding the brain to prevent damage from the competition. Humans tend not to have such thick skulls and other natural adaptations, and therefore do not generally rut.

Of course, man, the tool user, can find artificial means to overcome natural limitations. One well-known example of this behavior is the medieval jousting contest in which participants wear armor and ride horses toward each other at high speed.

The most recent observation of human rutting behavior occurred when two Taiwanese university students donned protective helmets and revved their motor scooters in an effort to impress a comely female of their species. The two were the same class, but not friends. Other classmates reported that both men fancied the same female student.

After indulging in a few drinks during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the two encountered each other, and words were spoken. The gauntlet was thrown down. In lieu of horses, the two would ride their motor scooters at each other at high speed, and the one who didn't turn away would win the exclusive right to pursue the female.

Obviously both were very keen on her, because neither of them turned away. Their scooters collided head-on at 50 mph. Both died instantly. The girl at the center of the rut refused to comment, other than to say that she "wasn't interested in either of them."

Smoking kills... if you try hard enough. A 42 year old man was badly injured by his air mattress one morning. The previous night he had inflated the punctured mattress with a tyre repair spray which, like all solvent-based aerosols, is flammable. Furthermore, he did this while keeping the windows tightly closed in his loft apartment. The next morning, this airhead lit a smoke before he opened the valve to deflate the air mattress. The resulting explosion wrecked most of the furnishings, part of the roof, and blew a window from the wall. The damage was so severe that a structural engineer condemned the flat. Narrowly missing a "full-blown" Darwin Award, our hero was taken to a burn care unit, and managed to survive this incident.

The Darwin Awards have celebrated many bone-headed things burglars do in the commission of their crimes. For instance, taking a shortcut down a 55-foot sheer rock face.

Early one morning, two men broke into a gymnasium (high school) east of Stockholm. After a profitable stroll through the building, they were startled by a janitor. They raced out of the building into the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing imminent detection, they took a shortcut to safety--down the face of a steep 55-foot rock escarpment. But in selecting this convenient shortcut, they failed to consider three crucial facts:

First, it was pitch black. Due to the northern latitude, the sun rises late in Sweden. Second, it had rained during the night. And third, the rock in eastern Sweden is granite, the type of rock that is polished into posh floors and fancy countertops. The danger of slippery granite is a well-known fact for residents of the area.

Escaping down a granite cliff, in the rain, in the dark? Try tilting a slab of polished granite, pouring water over it, and making a controlled descent while carrying a load of loot. This is the province of mountain goats, not humans hoping to pass on their genes. In short, one of the burglars slipped and fell head-over-heels to his death, bringing a new meaning to "the crack of dawn."

His worldly riches were scattered around him.

I was a student of electricity and mechanics in Communist Romania. At the time, it was mandatory for all children, including university students, to boost the economy by 'active participation.' Each autumn we worked in agriculture, harvesting fruits and vegetables, and for three weeks per year we were required to train in a power plant or factory, to get a feel for successful communist industry. This was known as "Rub The Mint".

My class was sent to Slatina where aluminum was obtained with the old power-hungry electrolysis process. We were not much use, so we were ignored by the people in charge of our 'training.' We spent the down time reviewing our class notes. Not only were the students bored, but so were many workers in the factory, who were actually paid for doing nothing.

One day I was assigned to walk documents from one department to another. On the way, I spotted two men crafting a wooden coffin. I was accustomed to all kinds of crazy sights, but a coffin... intriguing. Was the aluminum factory branching out into funeral supplies? No. "The coffin is for a comrade who accidentally removed himself from the gene pool," the woodcrafters told me.

Two recent hires, men in their twenties, were fiddling with the pressurized air hose used to power industrial air tools. They swept the dust off their dusty clothes; this was so much fun, one of them dropped his pants to feel the air sweep across his testicles. He bent further, and bet his comrade that he had the guts to pressurize his guts, and maybe have some fun farts. He proceeded to stick the hose in his anus and release six bar (atmospheres) of pressure, inflating and rupturing his colon and intestines.

He died within minutes from massive internal hemorrhage. He would not have survived even if he had pressurized himself in a hospital corridor. The autopsy revealed that the deceased had ruptured several meters of his colon and intestines. He was later found to have broken (heh) internal (heh) regulations. His 'scientific collaborator' stated that he did not believe his comrade would be so stupid as to proceed, and thought he was only goofing off.

"At the time, he was uncooperative," said the Saline County Sheriff, describing the difficulty deputies encountered in determining the cause of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Perhaps Michael, the 27-year-old victim of his inner klutz, was simply embarrassed to admit he had managed to shoot himself in the groin with a 22-caliber bullet, while armed only with a pellet gun.

The deputy's report included no mention of alcohol, so Michael was apparently sober when he placed a bullet on a picnic table and fired at it with his air rifle. The results he expected are not known. But the experiment yielded conclusive data. As he eventually, and abashedly, explained to a detective, "a pellet from the rifle hit the shell, causing it to explode."

The bullet shot into his groin, fragmenting into an area rich with major nerves and arteries, thereby presenting an interesting challenge to Kansas City neurosurgeons. They were up to the task, and Michael was thereby depriving of winning a full Darwin Award... this time!