Golf legend Tiger Woods was involved in a single-car crash last Tuesday. He ended up suffering a shattered right leg, resulting in doctors inserting a rod and placing screws in his foot and ankle.
Nearly a week later, various parties are still trying to piece together what precisely led to the accident.
At this point, two things are known for certain: why Woods was in a huge rush prior to the incident, and that video footage from his drive doesn’t show him moving erratically.
What remains unclear, however, is why he ended up wrecking his car.
This week, Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today decided to investigate an increasingly popular question pertaining to this whole ordeal: Did Woods fall asleep at the wheel?
“To me, this is like a classic case of falling asleep behind the wheel, because the road curves and his vehicle goes straight,” Jonathan Cherney, a consultant who provides car crash analysis as an expert witness in court cases and former police detective, told USA Today.
“It’s a drift off the road, almost like he was either unconscious, suffering from a medical episode or fell asleep and didn’t wake up until he was off the road and that’s where the brake application came in.”
Another expert, Felix Lee, an accident reconstruction specialist, told USA Today said that based on the evidence he has seen, “speed wasn’t that much of an issue” in what transpired. Rather, “it was just some kind of inattention that caused the curb strike.”
Rami Hashish, a principal at the National Biomechanics Institute, an organization which reviews the cause of accidents, posited that “Woods’ very delayed response” suggests “he wasn’t paying attention at all.”
Last week, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva suggested that inattention to the road, for any one of a number of reasons, may have led to the crash.
“That stretch of road has had quite a few accidents over the years. In fact, from January of last year to Tiger Woods’ incident, a total of 13 accidents, four of them with injuries,” he said, per ABC 7. “So, definitely, this stretch of road is challenging, and if you’re not paying attention, you can see what happens.”
Officials have suggested that Woods was sober when they found him and that what happened was simply accident.
Woods’ team provided an update on Friday noting that he had “been moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and received follow-up procedures on his injuries.” They also confirmed that “the procedures were successful and he is now recovering and in good spirits.”
Additional details regarding what led up to Woods’ accident should continue to emerge in the coming weeks and months. At that point, a clearer picture of the cause of the crash will likely become available.
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