Seems like it was snow-related.
I’m trying to come up with a way to become critically injured while plowing snow… Overturned vehicle? Got out of vehicle for some reason and subsequently run over by said vehicle? Frostbite?
Reports are that he was airlifted which implies pretty significant injury. I hope he recovers well from whatever happened.
There is an Instagram video of him operating a heavy tracked snow plow vehicle. Who knows if he was using that or an ATV with a small plow or something in between. My immediate thought was an overturn.
To me “critical” is more important than “airlifted.” He lives in a relatively remote area that was hit with a major snowstorm. It’s a lot more likely for them to need Medevac there than here where with lights and sirens you can get to 3 different hospitals within 15 minutes.
Wow, that sucks. Hope he has a full recovery.
I plow with a tractor–if it rolled I would almost certainly be injured. I should wear the seatbelt but mostly don’t. Hope he’s ok.
He may have tried clearing the auger. Ice can build up inside. We used to pick up any newspapers on the driveway before snow storms. A rolled up newspaper turns into a brick under snow.
A stuck auger is dangerous even with the machine off. The stuck auger can be under tension.
I can’t remember who it was, but recently another celebrity was in the hospital and described as in “critical but stable” condition. It turned out they were in a coma.
I agree. My gf’s aunt fell through her attic floor, landing in the kitchen. Cuts, scratches, bruising, shaken up, plus she is 80.
She and her husband have insurance specifically covering being airlifted. She was. Saved some time over ambulance transportation, but she was treated and released.
Was that Anne Heche?
Which is not to imply Renner is in a coma. “Critical but stable” covers a lot of possibilities. The person may or may not be conscious. From what I gather it means “life-threatening injury or condition, but they aren’t actively getting worse at the moment”.
Yes, I think it was Anne Heche.
I’ve almost gotten injured just using my regular old snowblower. I think it is almost easier to get injured with one of those than a lawn mower.
More details:
Yikes.
ETA: One kind of Snowcat:
I have no idea what happened to Jeremy Renner.
Unfortunately I do have an example of how to get injured while snowplowing. There are vertical guides on the top of the snow plow (such as in this picture). The person doing the snowplowing slipped and fell on the vertical guide, which entered his skull cavity. Permanent disability and he had to learn how to talk, walk, etc.
Assuming it’s actuate, the good news there, if there is any, is that there will appear to be no brain injury. Unless he lost so much blood that his brain was damaged.
The instructions for my tractor say if you don’t have the roll bar up, don’t wear the seat belt. I guess that gives you a fighting chance to dive off if it starts to go. If the roll bar is up, wear the seatbelt. Standard disclaimers apply.
There are plenty of ways to get injured while plowing. I’ve been plowing my own drive for 30 years, and I’m still scared of getting stuck. That REALLY ruins your day. It’s also quite easy to fall getting in and out of the truck, or on a tractor for that matter.
One time when off-roading, a good friend got out to look at things. Slipped and slid under his truck. Front left wheel rolled over his chest.
There are pics out there of Renner in his particular Snowcat (one at this article), and the track belts on his are much wider than in your pic.
My guess is that he fell out of the driver’s seat and landed on one of the tracks while the 'Cat was still moving forward. Track conveyed him forward, dropped him in front, and then ran him over. You can understand from the pics that the metal traction bars on the track belt would really mangle anything they ran over. Yikes.
Isn’t there some sort of dead-man switch so the machine would stop if he was no longer in the seat?
Possibly. But if you start googling for seat safety switches (which are also found on things like riding lawn mowers), you find a lot of talk about disabling/bypassing them. Not saying that’s what happened in Renner’s case, but it’s certainly one possibility.
Yep, the first thing I do with a boat, tractor, riding mower is disable the safety features that seem to be more effort than they’re worth.
Every used boat (with a motor) I’ve ever bought (10-12) has come with the deadman disabled.
Even if there were a fully function seat pressure switch, the most it probably would do is kill the engine. If he’s trucking along on hardpacked snow at, say 15 MPH when he tumbles out of the cab, the vehicle wouldn’t stop immediately; its momentum would keep it rolling forward, quite likely for long enough for the track belt to convey him forward and dump him in its path as I described earlier.