DRIVER’S ED. : Rearview Mirror : Rebel Without a Chance: Dean’s Final Ride
One week from today marks the 44th anniversary of the death of film star and pop icon James Dean in a car crash in San Luis Obispo County.
A lot of mystery, legend and misconception surround the accident. You could spend days sifting through Web sites dedicated to Dean, who was considered nearly as skilled an auto racing competitor as he was an actor.
The circumstances surrounding the accident aren’t terribly remarkable. It wasn’t dark or raining that Sept. 30 as Dean and his mechanic, Rolf Wutherich, headed from Los Angeles to Salinas, where the actor was to compete in a race.
Following in another car were journalist Sanford Roth and Bill Hickman, who was Dean’s dialogue coach for the film “Giant” and had dubbed him “Little Bastard.” George Barris--the famed car customizer who went on to create the Batmobile and scores of other storied Hollywood cars--hand-lettered that moniker on the trunk of Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, along with the number 130 on the hood and doors.
Dean was at the wheel of the Spyder, which he had bought only nine days earlier. The aluminum-bodied vehicle was a street-legal racing car that weighed about 1,200 pounds.
About 3 p.m., Dean received a speeding ticket just outside Bakersfield.
About two hours later, at the “Y” intersection of routes 466 (now 46) and 41 near Cholame, Dean swerved to avoid a black Ford Tudor that was turning left. The Ford hit the Porsche just in front of the driver’s door, and the Spyder spun off the road and into a telephone pole. Wutherich was thrown clear and suffered a broken jaw and shattered thigh. Dean was probably killed instantly. The driver of the Ford, college student Donald Turnupseed, was slightly injured. Dean had the right of way.
Dean was 24. Turnupseed, who never publicly gave his version of events, died in 1995 at age 63.
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Dean was going 100 mph, according to the instant and still-growing legend surrounding his death. But a forensic reconstruction of the accident by Failure Analysis Associates, a group of engineers and scientists who have investigated 20,000 accidents in the last 30 years, concludes that Dean was not speeding at the time of the crash, eyewitness accounts and police report notwithstanding.
Failure Analysis’ re-creation includes an animation of the accident with views from above and from both drivers’ perspectives. You can download it from the firm’s Web site at https://www.failure.com/gallery/james_dean.htm. The file is 14 megabytes, but for the die-hard Dean aficionado, it’s worth the bandwidth. It does not depict damage or injuries.
We’ll leave the last word to Dean himself, from the public service announcement he made for the National Highway Committee: “And remember, drive safely, because the life you save might be mine.”
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A few URLs for the curious:
https://www.jamesdeangallery.com.
https://www.jamesdean.com.
https://www.americanlegends.com/jamesdean/facts/lastride.html.
Robert Beamesderfer is Highway 1’s news editor. He can be reached at bob.beamesderfer.@latimes.com.
