Lawn mower blade slices through windshield — nearly impaling couple on Texas highway

If Lauren Drum hadn’t ducked, she’d almost certainly be dead, she says.

Drum and her husband were driving west on I-635 in Texas on Saturday morning when a lawn mower blade came hurtling through their windshield.

The couple, married in October, were heading to a store in Irving to look at bathroom vanities for their new home in Plano.

“The hole is literally where my head would have been,” Drum told McClatchy News.

They were driving at about 70 miles per hour when the sedan ahead of them rolled over road debris, launching it into the air. The Drums assumed it was shredded rubber or plastic, a piece of somebody’s bumper, typical junk. Instead, it was a sharp, 20-inch blade.

As it flew toward them, Drum jolted down and her husband swerved, but the blade hit the passenger side windshield, slicing straight into the cabin.

“We just heard a huge explosion, which was of course our windshield,” Drum said, adding it’s a good thing they were wearing sunglasses. “It kind of made the windshield into a powder almost, a lot of it.”

She still had no idea how lucky she was. They pulled off the road to assess the damage, thinking whatever hit them had bounced off the windshield.

It wasn’t until they started looking through the interior that Drum saw the blade, lodged between her seat and the door. It had smashed into the passenger window after careening into the cabin, she said, but was moving too quickly for either of them to see.

“I pulled it from my side, and from (my husband’s) perspective it looked like I was pulling it out of me … and he kind of freaked out,” she said.

Her only injury was a minor cut to her arm.

They called off their errand but returned to the scene of the accident the next day, and Drum was struck by the weight of what happened.

“We went out to see if there were any cameras facing the road, and I just had the worst panicky feelings, because I was in the passenger seat of my car and he was driving. It was crippling almost,” she said.

The fear felt real enough, but the idea she was nearly killed by bad luck and road debris has taken longer to accept. She’s getting there.

“It was so surreal, it didn’t feel real … but now it’s setting in how absolutely insane it was,” Drum said. “I keep catching myself throughout the day thinking, ‘Wow, I could have died this weekend.’”

It’s made her more appreciative of life, she said, and all the friends and family that fill it.

The odds of another lawn mower blade flying through the windshield seem low, she says, and that gives her comfort.

A tough question is what to take away from the experience, Drum wonders. What’s the lesson here?

“It was just such a freak thing,” she said.

“We were like, ‘Do we get a bulletproof windshield now?” Drum and her husband have joked.

But a question that’s unnerving Drum is has she, like the driver of the sedan, unknowingly sent a piece of potentially deadly debris flying at another car?

“I mean, the person (in the sedan) probably has no idea what they hit and that it could’ve killed me,” she said. “Have I hit something in the past that has caused something crazy to happen?”

This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Lawn mower blade slices through windshield — nearly impaling couple on Texas highway."