‘Asleep’ at wheel
Tiger was likely dozing: experts
Tiger Woods may have fallen asleep at the wheel of the luxury SUV he crashed outside Los Angeles, it was revealed Monday.
The 45-year-old links legend was driving a 2021 Genesis GV80 alone early last Tuesday morning when he veered across the median on Hawthorne Boulevard in Rancho Palos Verdes, went off the road and struck a tree, causing the SUV to roll over.
Woods broke several bones in his lower right leg, which indicates he was applying the brake at the time of impact, experts told USA Today, adding that the evidence indicates he braked late into the collision sequence.
“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 serves as an expert witness in court cases and examined the crash site in person, 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.”
Felix Lee, an accident reconstruction expert, told the outlet a key clue is how the SUV did not change direction entering the curve.
“My feeling is that speed wasn’t that much of an issue. It was just some kind of inattention that caused the curb strike,” said Lee, who is part of the Expert Institute, a network that provides expert witnesses in court cases.
Rami Hashish, principal at the National Biomechanics Institute, which investigates accidents, told USA Today that this suggests a “very delayed response.”
“It was suggesting he wasn’t paying attention at all,” said the expert.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has said investigators haven’t yet determined the vehicle’s speed, but said it could have been a factor, as well as inattentiveness.
“This stretch of road is challenging, and if you’re not paying attention, you can see what happens,” Villanueva said last week, adding that a preliminary assessment shows the crash was “purely an accident” with no evidence of impairment or medication involved.
However, the experts were surprised that Villanueva had determined it to be an accident without yet having examined the SUV’s “black box” computer, which could reveal steering, braking or acceleration actions before impact.
“There’s no real accident unless it’s a true medical emergency,” Cherney said. “There’s always some level of negligence, whether it’s simple negligence like looking down at your phone or changing the radio station that starts the whole collision sequence,” he continued.
“So when the sheriff is saying this is just an accident, I don’t know how in the world you can state that so early in the game without completing an in-depth, thorough investigation and reconstruction analysis.”