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and automatically apply the brakes to correct it. The car's ability to interfere with the driver's commands annoyed Dotcom.

"I always thought: 'I want to be in control myself, I want to be the guy who knows when to brake and when to accelerate and how to get out of situations if the car gets unstable.' "

It was about 9pm, and a light rain was falling as he led the two-car convoy back to Munich along the three-lane highway. The speedometer was sitting on 250kmh as he flew down the far-left lane, where the fastest cars sit. "We're going into a slight corner and all of a sudden there is a Volkswagen Passat moving over all the way from the very right into the very left lane . . . hopping two lanes. No reason. There was no traffic. He didn't have to do it."

Dotcom signalled, flashing his headlights to warn the car, but the speed with which it cut in front of the Mercedes had him tap the brakes. The automatic stability control kicked in, Dotcom and the car were at odds — and suddenly he was going sideways towards the hard metal barrier at the side of the Autobahn, still doing 250kmh. "I didn't even wear a seat belt. I didn't start putting a seatbelt on until I had kids." ("Totally stupid by the way," he says, switching to a road safety campaigner. "Be clear on that, right?")

At the point where the Mercedes came off the road, the metal barrier had been removed for a planting project. Instead of the hard metal, which Dotcom says would have destroyed the car and all in it, there was a stand of young trees "and that is what cushioned the whole crash". The Audi carrying his five friends watched the car spin through the air, over the edge of the road and into the trees. "No one thought we would have survived that." Glass shattered, smoke was everywhere.

"The moment I lost control of the car, I just took my hands off the wheel and said, 'That's it, game over.' I was quite sure I'm going to die." The trunk at the rear of the car was severed by a road sign as it flew into the stand of trees, coming to rest on its roof. Dotcom's head collided with that of his friend in the passenger seat, knocking him out. The side airbag broke his arm.

"I woke up in the back of the car. The space between the two front seats is this much" — he holds his hands about a foot apart — "I never figured out, how did I fit through that and wake up in the back?"

He opened his eyes. Kirsten was hanging upside down in her seatbelt. Her head has knocked out the side window and blood was running towards the ground, over the top of her face. In the front, his friend was coughing as smoke filled the car. He clambered out, a sore head from connecting with Dotcom's, and started photographing the scene. "If you see pictures of the car, no one would believe someone would just get out and walk around. The car was completely destroyed. You would not believe the three people in it got out alive."

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