A 22-year-old Cortez man walked away from a rollover crash near Mancos early Saturday morning with superficial injuries.
Colorado Highway Patrol Trooper Josh Lewis said the single-vehicle incident occurred on U.S. Highway 160 near Montezuma County Road 38 about 1:30 a.m. Saturday. The driver of a 2006 Honda CRV was returning from a date in Durango when the vehicle went off the westbound side of the roadway then went back on the road before crossing both lanes and going over the eastbound shoulder, rolling two or three times down an embankment and stopping upright.
Carter Pape, the driver of the Honda, said he was driving around a bend when another car was in his oncoming lane. He said he swerved and overcorrected. Lewis described the incident as a single-vehicle crash.
Pape said the experience was unique.
“I remember thinking about, like, what the experience of death would actually be like,” Pape said. “That’s where my mind went to first. And then when the car stopped rolling, my thought was, ‘Wait, so am I dead? And, like, the afterlife is basically like a continuation of the other life?’”
Lewis said it did not appear drugs or alcohol were involved. Pape, who recently moved to Cortez from North Carolina, was wearing his seat belt. He was cited for careless driving.
Pape said the date in Durango was not worth losing his car.
“I think no matter how well that date had gone it would not have been worth it,” Pape said.
sdolan@the-journal.com
