A lot of people think that car journalists are the luckiest sods on God’s green earth. They get paid to drive the hell out of latest sports and super cars, they get flown to exotic places by car makers, and some of them even become celebrities. That is mostly true, but this job is not without its perils.

About a year ago Motor Trend’s host Jessi Lang, one of only a handful of successful women in this business, suddenly went absent. They didn’t say anything back then, but as it turns out she was involved in a horrific Audi R8 crash on a German autobahn from which she is still recovering.

In this video Jessi tells the story of her near-death experience:

The history of motoring journalism is chock full of such incidents. Perhaps the most famous one is Richard Hammond’s jet car accident. Most of the time, if the person is really lucky, he or she just bins the car and insurance will take care of the damages. But sometimes, as in Jessi’s case, it claims a lot more than that.