Richard Hammond thanks emergency services for saving his life as he reflects on Top Gear car crash twenty years on

Richard Hammond thanked emergency services for saving his life as he reflected on his terrifying Top Gear car crash in a new post on Sunday – 20 years on from the accident. 

The presenter, 56, was hospitalised in 2006 after crashing a Vampire Dragster at a speed of more than 300mph while filming a segment for the show and put into a coma by doctors.

One of the dragster's tyres blew, causing it to spin out of control and crash at York's Elvington airfield, flipping it upside down and leaving Richard with serious head injuries.

He survived the crash and even managed to get himself out of the wreckage which he has since said he has 'no memory of'.

In a new post on Instagram on Sunday he marked two decades since the crash, saying in the split second bit happened he assumed 'the next thing on my To Do list was to die'.

Alongside images from the track and the smoking vehicle, he wrote: 'Twenty years ago today I came to an abrupt stop upside down in a Yorkshire field, convinced I was about to die.

'A front tyre had blown on the jet powered dragster I had been driving at over 300mph. I had pulled the lever to release the parachute and done my best to steer the car away from disaster, but disaster was, it seemed, my fate and having done everything I could to avert it, I gave myself over to that fate.

'I didn't scream. It wasn't frightening. Honestly, the only way I can convey how those few, frantic, last moments felt is that it simply occurred to me that the next thing on my To Do list was to die.

'I didn't die. I was kept in a deep coma for a few weeks whilst my brain swelled inside my skull, the frontal lobe damaged when it dashed itself against the inside of that supposedly protective housing under the g-forces of deceleration after the car flipped and dug into the mossy, Yorkshire grass.

'Depending on your age and inclination to follow the news, you may have heard of the event. There was, I'm told, something of a media fuss about the "Jet Car Crash".

'I wasn't aware of it; I was in a coma and when I woke, had only a two minute memory.

'I am only here today to note this anniversary and write these words because of the work of the many people involved in rescuing me from the shattered car, flying me to hospital and treating me there.'

He next posted a list of names of the people who treated him on and off the scene.

Concluding his post he penned: 'I have had so many lucky career breaks, so many amazing adventures around the world and am father to the two happiest, kindest, most wonderfully talented and loving daughters but I would have seen none of them if these people hadn't turned up to work that day and done their job.

'Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.'

His daughter Izzy, 26, sweetly penned underneath the post: 'Chuffed you didn't die Pa x.'

Back in 2024 he revealed that he suffered 'survivor's guilt' after the accident. He said: 'I had terrible survivors' guilt, not because other people had died around me and I'd survived, which is the sort of commonly held view of it.'

Instead he said that he questioned whether the accident was his fault. 

'I mean it was me that ran into the office, (Top Gear Executive Producer, Andy) Wilman's office at the BBC. I don't know why the idea came to me, I just ran in and said 'Wilman, Wilman, I want to go real f***ing fast, really fast like proper fast.

'That's where the idea came from. Next thing you know I got a phone call from him saying "Right Rich, we've sorted this jet-powered dragster for you to have a go".

He added: 'Was it my fault, I have responsibilities, two beautiful daughters, Izzy and Willow, they're everything, and had I risked them being without a father by my rash actions?

'So I had terrible guilt until they could look at what telemetry there was on the machine and they could assure me "No Richie, your reactions were good, you did everything, there was nothing you could do beyond that point, the tyre had gone, it was an accident".'

Describing what was going through his mind during the nearly fatal accident he said: 'As it went over, (I thought) 'well there isn't a roof, the wheels aren't on the ground, the parachute hasn't stopped it – there is nothing I can do now.

'I felt an immense sense of calm. It was an acceptance, the next thing that happens is I die – what other outcome could there possibly be, there's no roof on this car.'

He added: 'It wasn't frightening. I wasn't wildly unhappy. I was very calm and "that's what happens now".' 

He said that as well as not fearing death during his brush with it in 2006, the experience left him without fear of eventually dying one day.

He said: 'We all know fight or flight, the sort of in-built human responses. There is a third one according to someone I've chatted to, which is sort of freeze.

'And it's the point at which you realise there's nothing you can do.'

Richard shares daughters Izzy and Willow, 22, with his ex-wife Mindy who he split from in January 2025. He is now in a relationship with therapist Kiki Glen.