It's Halloween night and my son and I are driving the CLK350 to a friends house to pass out candy, BBQ, and hand out information about our church. We pull into their curved driveway which is lined with Tiki torches mounted to tall metal poles on both sides of the driveway. The guy's wife is out front so I roll my window down to ask her where she would like to me to park the car for the evening. She says, "put it back in the street." So I start backing up, looking over my right shoulder, but what I don't see is how close I am getting to one of the tiki torches on my left, that is until my mirror takes it out causing the lit torch to fall through my open window and into my car. The torch lands between my left leg and the door.

I immediately attempt to move away from the fire, but I am constrained by the seatbelt and to add fuel to the fire, I am now sitting on the release latch. By now, the seatbelt is catching on fire, the car continues rolling down the driveway and into the street, my son is yelling, "stop the car! stop the car!" I feel like I am Ricky Bobby yelling, "I'm on fire! I'm on fire!"

So my son jumps out of the moving car, runs around the front, opens the driver's side door, reaches in and grabs the hot torch and throws it in the street, and begins putting the seatbelt fire out - all with his bare hands! With the fire out, I am now able to stop the car, put it in gear, and get myself out of the seatbelt and out of the car. I check myself for burns, but praise the Lord, not even my clothing is singed. My son escaped with only minor burns on one of his fingers that did not require a visit to the doctor's office.

Oh what a night! BTW, the car has both exterior and interior damage that I have made an insurance claim on.

 

I am sure looking back on that it's amusing, but it sounds pretty scary! Fire and cars do not mix! I'm glad no one was seriously injured.

 

Since you were there in part on a church mission, you probably didn't utter any of the many words and phrases that come to mine. Very good that no one was seriously injured...…..

 

You are lucky to be ok. Sounds like a crazy Halloween.

 

Wow that's a crazy story. Very glad to hear no serious injuries came of it to anyone.

 

It was definitely a scary moment. I'm not sure what would have happened if my son had not been there to save the day.

I did get the estimate back from the body shop - $4,000.00!

 

Can you post any pictures showing the damage? $4000 is just OUCH!

 

Sure.

Burnt seatbelt

driver's side door

Interior trim on driver's side door

 

More pics:

Burnt seat cover

Mirror housing scratched

 

The paintwork damage looks like something that might buff out.