[JekylandHyde]

As many of you know, I host a page on my Site dedicated to those people who have lost their lives in the MR2.

Many of you are aware that we have lost two lives inside of two different MR2s in the past month and at least one other earlier this year. These are important stories for me personally, since I have been through so many accidents and also for us as a community because there will be more.

The only difference between the following tragic story and my own accidents and some of your accidents, is a few feet, a few seconds ...

Over the past few years I have received many e-mails from survivors, parents and friends of those stories on my pages (I also have a page on street racing deaths).

I always ask permission to share the personal side of the story, but it is usually declined. Tonight, a very brave young man has given me permission to share his story. I sincerely hope the community receives his words well. This is a time to feel and to learn, not to critique.

This is the e-mail I received last night:

I wanted to write to thank you for the work you've done to maintain
this page and relate my story. I've tried to be an active member of
the MR2 community for the last few months I owned my car, spending
more time on mr2oc.com than I spend at school probably, I'll admit.

My name is Kevin Stich, I was the driver in the crash involving
Samantha Hopper that you have posted on your page. It was actually my
dad who showed me that you had listed the accident on your page, but I
had found it before. Perhaps a week and a half before the crash I
stumbled on that section of your webpage. I read over the stories and
quite a few of them hit really close to home, but a part of my brain
still though that the people I read about were somehow different than
me.

I loved Samantha, seriously, and I don't say that lightly. She was the
only girl I'd ever met who I thought I might be able to spend my life
with. She was everything I had ever wanted and dreamed of, smart,
beautiful, funny, and she loved cars . The first time we ever hung
out was when I went to show her my MR2, and she was quite impressed.
She loved that car, probably as much as I did, and we spent a lot of
time in it. She came with me to every AutoX I ran (rain or shine), and
tagged along in the car whenever she could. I loved having her there,
and believe it or not usually dropped my time by several seconds
whenever she was co-pilot. Life was great, I had everything I wanted.
The car I'd always dreamed of, the girl I always dreamed of, finishing
up the school year strong, track season coming to a close, everything
was great. I was on top of the world.

I don't remember much of what happened before the accident, I don't
even know how fast I was going. I had never been down the road before
and was initially quite cautious, but soon saw that the road was well
marked and well maintained and felt fairly confident on the road.
After a few miles out that stretch the jurisdiction on the road
switches from the city to the local county. This is about a third of a
mile from the tresses, from what I understand. The smooth recently
paved asphalt is suddenly changes, the road hasn't been repaved in at
least twenty years and it shows its wear. The regulations for signage
suddenly change, and even then that turn isn't marked as the laws
require. Whereas a 45 MPH recommended speed only a mile back meant
easily 95 (which is significantly faster than I was driving) the 15
MPH sign for that turn means 10 MPH, 15 if you're feeling bold. These
are things that I learned in the weeks since the accident. The single
frame shown in that newspaper article depict a quite harrowing stretch
of road, but in actuality until that exact turn, the road is
everything any driver would ever dream for. The estimate I've most
heard is that I was going 35-40 MPH absolute max.

I was driving dangerously that night, obvious in hindsight, but not
incredibly so. I always drove my MR2 with respect. I was aware of my
limits and uneasy with feeling out the limits of the car without a
wide safety margin. My friends made fun of me on more than one
occasion for how slow I drove, but I didn't care because I knew it
wasn't worth taking a risk. I came on that blind turn, following the
signs the same way I always would have, and didn't pull through. Some
exact combination of factors, the dark moonless night, my
unfamiliarity with the road, the misplaced signage, all led to what
happened. I wasn't out to prove anything, I wasn't trying to push any
limits, I was just trying to get me and my girlfriend to prom. I came
up on the turn, couldn't see the road because of the tresses and so I
tried to slow down as much as I could. When I saw the road I knew the
situation was bad, I tried to pick a line and follow up it but
panicked and braked further and then started to slide on a patch of
loose gravel and lost control. The whole situation is strange, because
I always drove extra carefully at night, and when I was on country
roads, and I was always particularly careful when I drove with a
passenger. Probably if I drove through there under the exact same
conditions 100 times I would only crash once. If i lived over the
whole night 100 times I probably would have only gone down that road
twice. But I did go down that road and I did crash. Of all the crazy
things I've ever done in a car that was far from the craziest, and I'd
only ever once even squealed my tires on a public road.

There are a thousand lessons I've learned from this incident, be
careful on unfamiliar roads, slow down at night, but the most poignant
has been that no one is immune to tragedy. There is no fundamental
difference between those who fate chooses and those it passes over.
I'm graduating as valedictorian on June 10th, I'm treasurer of the
Honors Society, I ran Varsity Track and Cross Country, I as an intern
for the Oregon Department of Human Services doing web development. I'm
attending Oregon State University this fall, and I have an open
invitation from Cornell to transfer whenever I want. I potentially
could have gone to UCLA, USC, Carnegie Mellon, or a half dozen other
schools but couldn't bear the thought going so far from Samantha. I
don't drink or smoke, I don't cheat on my math tests, and I'd never
gotten a ticket. I'm not a bad kid, but I still made a mistake and pay
a heavy price for it. It can happen to anyone, period.

I have some pictures of the car if you want to put them on the page. I
know seeing it made me come to a lot of realizations, and maybe it
might do the same for others.