Nearly two decades later, Richard Hammond, star of “Grand Tour,” reveals he still lives with the consequences of the accident that left him in a coma.
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Richard Mark Hammond, co-host of the show “The Grand Tour,” nearly lost his life in 2006 while filming a stunt for the defunct program Top Gear. Hammond was driving a Dragster Vampire when one of the tires blew out, causing him to lose control. The impact of the crash left him with serious brain injuries.
It was two weeks in a coma, and although he recovered and returned to the show the following year, Hammond revealed he still lives with the consequences of the terrible accident; the presenter, who had previously stated he had suffered very severe post-traumatic amnesia for weeks, told LADbible how the trauma still affects him, even after all this time.
“I think anyone who has suffered a brain injury will probably agree that it never leaves you, in the sense that there’s always a bit of you… if you lose the keys to your car or you forget something.”
“Mine was an injury to the frontal lobe, which would explain it. I kept thinking: ‘Oh no. Is this because of the brain injury? Or is it because I’m now 54 years old? Is it just because I lost my keys?’ Doctors call it ‘lost key syndrome,’ and it continues indefinitely.”
For Hammond, it’s a constant struggle not to let the trauma like that of the accident prevent him from continuing to do the things he loves: “We all have moments, not all involve crashes at over 400 kilometers per hour, some are good, some are bad. But we all have those moments that shape us,” he says.
“It would have been easy for me to turn it into something bad, but my wife and I decided from the beginning that whatever happened, we would turn it into something good.”
