Features
Clarkson on risk taking
If the golf buggy had had an engine, the person going the other way would have heard it coming. But it didn't. So he came round the bush, and bang. Of course, you may argue that a golf buggy can only do 15mph and that no harm can come to a driver at this speed. True enough.
But when it has a head-on with another buggy, also travelling at 15mph you have a 30mph impact. Doesn't sound like much? Really? Well try running face first into a wall and then send me an email explaining how things turned out.
Did the accident bring everyone to their senses? Yes... we thought. But wait, what's this? Why, it's a teenager attempting to do a donut in his buggy. And over there, there's an 11-year-old trying to jump his over an iguana.
This is the problem, the concept that our friends in the yellow and green parties just can't seem to understand. That for some, taking risks is fun.Of course, they'll say that the people I'm talking about are yobs. They'll point to someone called Darren in a Nova, doing handbrake turns in a Tesco car park. But me?
Well I'll point to Steve Fossett.
'Steve to me is what the baby Jesus is to the Archbishop of Canterbury'
As I write, the American adventurer is missing in the Nevada desert. There are fears that he's crashed his plane and that he's dead. It'll be a terrible shame if it is true, because Steve to me is what the baby Jesus is to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I met him once many years ago and he didn't really fit the profile. I knew, from reading his biography, that he'd made a fortune on Wall Street and since retiring had raced at Le Mans, swum the Channel and beaten the world speed record for crossing the Pacific in a sail boat.
So I was expecting him to be a cross between Gordon Gekko, Thomas Crown and the Terminator. I was expecting him to break every bone in my fingers when we shook hands and for him to slap me on the back with such force that my spine was shattered.
This turned out to be wrong. "Can you tell me where Steve Fossett is?" I said to a man in tatty combat trousers, sweeping the floor in a big aeroplane hanger. "That's me," he said quietly.
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