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I spent another year living on my poetry and then, as if to make me change my lifestyle radically, I was involved in a very serious car accident. On a very tiring tour I fell asleep at the wheel of my car and struck a wall head on, at about 100km per hour - 60 mph. More than ten people had already died at that spot. I came out of it with several fractures, but alive. I was immobilized for three months or more and my savings ran out. I was still not racing. I, who had dreamt of starting out at eighteen, had still not entered a single race by the age ° of twenty-two. Having been to racing circuits many times as a spectator, I had noticed how infatuated young people were with this sport, and also the number of boys who wanted to be racing drivers without 1 : 1 Porud 1 1 1 1 wd knowing how to proceed. I did not know much more than they did, and told myself that the best way for me to enter the racing scene would be to find a career that took advantage of their enthusiasm. I knew how to write, so the solution was obvious. I would become a reporter for a sports car magazine. I got in touch with a number of specialist magazines, but in vain because so many other young people had come up with the same idea. Then I noticed a small advertisement in the motor section of L ‘Equipe from someone looking for photographer-reporters, no experience required. I wrote, and the advertiser replied saying that my application was being considered, but that I had to send 150 francs for administrative costs. In exchange, I would receive some film to make a test report on a subject of my choice. I sent the money, got back the film, wrote the report - on a motor race, of course - and immediately sent it to the address indicated. Very soon afterwards, I received a letter asking me to call a number in Dijon, where the head office of the firm that had placed the advertisement was situated. I met the head of the publishing company - a man of about thirty years of age who claimed to have made a fortune in photography in the United States. 134 INTELLIGENT DESIGN: MESSAGE FROM THE DESIGNERS