Death
On Saturday, 21 March 1981, Mike Hailwood set off in his Rover SD1 with his children Michelle and David to collect some fish and chips. As they returned along the A435 Alcester Road through Portway Warwickshire near their home in Tanworth-in-Arden, a truck made an illegal turn through the barriers into the central reservation, and their car hit it. Michelle, aged nine, was killed instantly; Mike and David were taken to hospital, where Mike died two days later due to severe internal injuries, he was 40 years old. David survived with minor injuries . The truck driver was fined £100.
Hailwood claimed to have been told by a fortune teller in South Africa that he wouldn't live to 40 and would be killed by a truck. The story was repeated by Elizabeth McCarthy in a 1981 memoir, while recounting her relationship with Mike, whom she had met at the first Canadian GP in 1967. When he asked her hand in marriage, she replied that she was hesitant to marry someone who could die at any weekend race. He then told her his story and said; "...so you see, it won't happen on a track."
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Famous quotes containing the word death:
“In every unbeliever’s heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic’s Hell.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“And anyone is free to condemn me to death
If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence.
I shall will to the common stock of air my breath
And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.”
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“Bruno Antony: Tell me, Judge, after you’ve sentenced a man to the chair, isn’t it difficult to go out and eat your dinner after that?
Judge Dolan: When a murderer is caught he must be tried, when he is convicted he must be sentenced, when he is sentenced to death he must be executed.
Bruno Antony: Quite impersonal, isn’t it?
Judge Dolan: So it is. Besides, it doesn’t happen every day.
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