The details behind a serious crash at GM that split a Corvette in two

Jan 28, 2024

The Detroit Free Press has obtained documents that detail the moments leading up to a violent crash in June involving a General Motors' engineer and a Corvette he was testing at GM Proving Ground in Milford that left the engineer with life-threatening injuries.

There are 147 miles of test roads at the proving ground. This accident happened on GM's Ride and Handling course, which resembles a two-lane freeway with a posted speed limit of 75 mph, according to the incident report by the Michigan State Police. The Detroit Free Press obtained the report through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The report, completed in late-August, said state police Senior Patrol Leader Sgts. Chad Lindstrom and Gregory Kamp investigated the accident. Their reconstruction of it revealed the series of events leading to the car leaving the road, spinning out of control, taking out a tree, before ending up in the woods, ripped in half and bursting into flames. They listed excessive speed as a contributing factor, but did not specify a reason for the car's excessive speed.

GM spokesman Kevin Kelly confirmed there was "a single vehicle accident at the grounds that resulted in an injury of an employee." He declined to provide specifics, but added, "none of our safety protocols have changed at this time.”

GM plans to review the accident report itself, Kelly said.

The skies above Milford were mostly cloudy midmorning on June 22. It was about 73 degrees with a soft 9-mph wind drifting from the east and southeast when the 2023 gray Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Convertible started out on its test drive, the report said.

The police report redacted the name of the driver, but the Detroit Free Press has learned from three sources that it was engineer Shawn Getty. Getty, a vehicle system integration engineer, has been with GM for about 11 years, according to his LinkedIn page. The sources asked to not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the incident.

The Corvette was driving along a straightaway section of the Ride and Handling track that consists of "several chatter (design) bumps, with the roadway surface having a corrugated-like (ripple) presentation. This type of roadway is common for test tracks and simulates roadways open to the public, in disrepair," the police report said. But police note that were no signs of disrepair to this track.

Police said that prior to the test drive, the car — which was a prototype — had undergone a complete vehicle software update. This was to be a "standard procedure test drive." The report said: "It was advised the update completed was not unique in the sense that it was a prototype; it was already in production vehicles and currently in vehicles being operated on the open roadways."

At about 10:42 a.m. the vehicle left the road and one minute later, the OnStar Security Team was notified of a crash that involved a Chevrolet on the Milford Proving Ground. GM was notified of the crash at 10:44 a.m., which prompted a response from the proving ground's emergency team, the report stated.

"Maintenance/grounds personnel observed smoke from the fire and eventually located the driver of the vehicle, who had suspectedly crawled from the wreckage site to the roadway’s edge," the report stated. "The driver was said to have critical injuries."

GM personnel called for a life flight to the University of Michigan Hospital. According to a GoFundMe page created on July 10 by the driver's sister, Danielle Getty, he is fighting for his life. It reads that "Shawn was involved in an accident while at work ... it involved a vehicle fire where he sustained multiple internal injuries and 3rd-degree burns on over 70% of his body (including his head and face). He was airlifted to a Michigan hospital where he will remain in the trauma ICU burn unit in life-threatening critical care. He is heavily sedated due to his injuries and will be undergoing multiple surgeries."

The page has raised $15,260 to help Getty and his family. His sister wrote, "Shawn has a long road ahead of him to any type of recovery. In the best-case scenario, he will be in the ICU for at least 3-4 months and then may transfer to a live-in care facility for rehabilitation. We don't know what to expect for his life and if he will be able to overcome this tragedy, but his family is committed to supporting him through all that he will need."

Danielle Getty did not respond to requests from the Free Press for comment on this article.

Police said the vehicle was captured on camera entering the Ride and Handling Loop at 10:28 a.m., but nothing beyond that was captured. The police reconstructed what happened based on tire tracks and other evidence.

The initial findings showed that after the driver lost control and the car left the road, it traveled about 350 feet across the grass before entering the woods. The wreckage was found near a large tree about 2 feet in diameter. The car was in two pieces, having separated just behind the driver’s seat near the B pillar, the report stated. The tree impact was on the driver’s side where the gas tank is located on the mid-engine Corvette. The rear portion of the vehicle was at final rest slightly southeast of the tree while the front portion was southwest of the tree, the report stated.

"The underbrush was burned in a fan-like pattern approximately 50 to 60 feet from where the tree was impacted in nearly all directions, although more concentrated (and furthest away) to the south and west," the report read. "Both portions of the vehicle had sustained catastrophic fire damage aside from the obvious contact damage and intrusion on the left (driver’s) side from the tree. Based on the burn pattern and rotation of the vehicle portions after initial impact, it is believed the vehicle caught fire upon impacting the tree and separating into two pieces."

The police concluded that speed contributed to the crash, but in the report the police were not able to pinpoint the exact speed above the 75-mph limit the car was traveling.

The incident summary read that the car was traveling southbound on the test loop "at a speed greater than that posted and lost control. The vehicle began to rotate in a clockwise manner and departed the roadway to the right (west) onto a grassy segment adjacent to the roadway. The vehicle continued to rotate clockwise, with its driver’s side leading, and traveled into a heavily wooded area where it encountered numerous small brush/saplings as well as a small tree, which it uprooted/unearthed."

The car continued before hitting the larger tree with the driver's side where it then broke in two and caught fire upon impact with the tree. The rear segment rotated about 180 degrees counterclockwise and came to rest southeast of the tree while the front segment rotated about 220 degrees counterclockwise before reaching a final rest southwest of the tree.

"Based on minimum speed calculations and the severity of the tree impact ... excessive speed was a contributing factor in this crash," the report concluded.

GM Milford Proving Ground will turn 100 years old in two years. It started as 1,200 acres of what had been three farms when GM bought the land in 1923. It has grown to 4,000 acres with 174 buildings and 147 miles of test roads. About 4,900 people work there.

The road surfaces of GM's tracks vary from dirt roads, to hills, to bumpy concrete with purpose-made potholes, to six lanes of banked concrete on a 5-mile Circle Track, to a straightaway with no speed limit, to the speedway-ready 3-mile Milford Road Course and the well-known Black Lake. Black Lake is a slab of black asphalt that in the sunlight gives the illusion that it is water. It is the size of 59 football fields and is one of the largest vehicle dynamics pads in the world.

In a Detroit Free Press series on the GM Proving Ground, which ran earlier this year, GM talked about the extensive training and safety protocols it has in place for test drivers. Still, there have been eight fatalities over Milford's decadeslong history. To be a vehicle test driver at the facility is grueling, on both drivers and vehicles. These engineers are the top guns of driving and what they do is dangerous.

But the risk the engineers take yields insight that leads to technologically advanced and safer cars coming off the assembly lines and onto customers' driveways, GM has said. It also has had a good safety record, Frank Taverna, GM's senior manager of traffic safety at Milford Proving Ground and Desert Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona, told the Detroit Free Press in March.

Taverna has since retired. But he said then that GM measures safety as accidents per million miles and GM’s accident rate is half that of the national average on the public road system. “We feel that’s really good because we’re doing test driving and so people are doing more risky stuff at higher speeds with vehicles that are not fully developed yet,” Taverna said at the time.

More:Fast facts about GM Milford Proving Ground, from top secrets to 150 mph test drives

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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.