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DISABILITIES

By Daniel J. Vance

On October 2, 1980, at 3 a.m., Steve Regnier was navigating a Ford Bronco at 100 miles per hour around a Ford Motor Company testing facility near Yucca, Arizona. He was a professional test driver.

"The back of the Bronco was heavily weighted down with buckshot," said Regnier recently over the telephone. "It was a weight test to see how the vehicle would drive full of weight."

He had just blown a tire only four hours before. Test drivers drove at the facility 24 hours a day.

"While driving along I heard a loud bang, and realized another tire had blown," he said. "I slid down the steep embankment and off in the dirt. I wasn't stopping. I hit the corner of a building just off the test track. That's when I went airborne. I don't remember anything after that. They told me I flipped nine or ten times."

He broke his neck at the C-5 level when a buckshot bag used for the weight test from behind barreled into his neck. He became a quadriplegic, not able to use most of the muscles in his four limbs.

The first words out of his surgeon's mouth were, "You're never going to walk again."

"He offered me little hope," said Regnier of the surgeon. "But I took the news pretty good. The first thing I said to him in reply was, 'Where do we go from here?'"

Regnier spent six months recovering in the hospital. "They said my attitude was good, so they usually put me in a room with someone contemplating suicide," he said. "Often these people were up half the night crying and telling me their story. I was listening and trying to help. It made recovery difficult for me."

Growing up near Scottsdale, Arizona, he had always "lived and breathed" sports. Not being able to play them was his biggest post-accident adjustment. Today he lives in Minnesota, drives his own car using special equipment, and serves as a board member of SMILES, a nonprofit organization helping people with disabilities live independently.

Why such a good attitude?

He said, "Somebody asked me once, 'Do you ever think, why you?' But I have always thought, Why not? An accident like mine can happen to anyone. I'd rather have it happen to me than to a loved one because I know I can handle it."

For more, see www.danieljvance.com