This is in the news in our area. Pretty neat story.
survival story

More details: Guess having a knife on you isn't such a bad thing....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091002492.html?hpid=topnews

Bowie Student Trapped 8 Days Details Pain, Survival Tactics

Incredible story! The sheer will to survive. The picture in Doug's link makes it look like the car is close but just out of sight of the road. I couldn't imagine the results if he had not been wearing his seatbelt.

~Nemo.

Really interesting. This could happen almost anywhere. The lesson I'm gathering from this is if your PSK is not on your person you might as well not have one to begin with.

IMHO his going in and out of consciousness and his apparent disorientation suggest head injury to me. The press seems to be looking for a more scandalous explanation.

I saw this story on the local news.

At one point in the coverage, they showed where the car had gone over the embankment from the vantage point of someone driving down the road. There's no way that a passersby could have seen the car, coming from either direction. Worse still, there were absolutely no skid marks, the grass wasn't torn up, and no trees in the area were broken in a way that would be easily noticed.

As was mentioned in the Washington Post article, he was less than a mile from home.

It's another illustration that no matter how short the trip, even if in the most well-traveled areas, you should always carry your gear with you.

As Doug mentioned, at least he had his pocket knife.

Guess I'll be moving my kit from the trunk to within arm's reach. I should know better anyways

Guys' very fortunate but in looking at the picture I cannot believe anyone would miss seeing that car. I guess the overpass shielded their view but still, that's just awful someone would be right there in plain sight the whole time.

You don't need to move the whole kit, just stuff you'd need immediately in case of a crash. A good serrated knife is stored in the console of my truck and it's not part of any other kit.