I was going through a (very) narrow mountain pass with my 250 when a large truck went by the other way. Its mirror mount tube steel struck my driver side mirror like a cannonball and blew the entire guts of the mirror away like a shotgun blast.

The mirror glass, pivot mechanism, mirror heater wiring, and everything blew out in a million shards of glass and plastic. By dumb luck my window was halfway up, so it all deflected away from the cab onto the road. I just missed a major amount of face injury, which might have caused a secondary accident if I'd been blinded, etc.

Morale One: keep your window up when driving in narrow areas at speed to avoid getting a pile of high velocity mirror glass in your face! Folding the mirrors in is even better, if they aren't needed.

Morale Two: Carry some cheap reflective mirror repair material in your tool box, along with a million nylon tie wraps. It's really really a pain to drive without any mirror at all, and this stuff can be jury rigged to serve as a temporary mirror replacement. There ain't no Ford dealers or Walmarts that far into the mountains!

I replaced it later with a new one, something like $300 and a day of door disassembly. It used to be that my wife didn't like to drive off road, but now she doesn't want to drive the beast at all!

 

Actually, you got away pretty easy. A construction road sign was hanging across a barrier wall on the interstate. I couldn't get away from it because 2 other cars were trying to share my lane. When my mirror exploded, I had to have the window and channel replaced, and the door sanded and painted because the pieces of glass and plastic actually gouged the window and door, and went through the window channel. This was all to the tune of around $950. As you can figure, I wasn't in a very good mood when I got home.

Bluehawk

 

What a bummer I have had a few close calls like that some times i wished they didnt stick out so far will keep it in mind to keep glass up x