Mitt Romney. Photo:Brian Rawson-Ketchum.

In France, 1968, republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney survived a horrific car crash in which one of his passengers was killed.  Driving the French Mormon mission president, Duane Anderson, from Pau to Bordeaux, their car crashed with the car of Albert Marie, a Catholic priest at the time.

“We were all talking about how dangerous how the highways were and the French highways, as you know, have the trees that line the road, and we were all talking about how dangerous that was,” Romney said. “And literally as we were having that conversation, boom, we were hit,” Romney told The Boston Globe.

Romney’s brother in law, Bruce Robinson flew to France – at the behest of his father in law – to oversee the medical care of the Mr. Romney. He told The Globe in 2007, “Mitt was just coming out of his coma, but his face was all swollen, his eye was almost shut, and one arm was fractured,” Robinson said. “We didn’t have CT scans or MRIs in those days, but we got what tests we could to show that he was OK, and that he was certainly going to survive, although he probably came within a hair of not surviving.”

Witnesses pegged Marie as inebriated following the crash but Mr. Anderson did not press charges for the incident due to a fear of reprisal from either the French government or the Catholic Church.

Mr. Anderson’s wife Leaola was the only fatal victim of the car crash.