On New Year's day, a C5 Chevrolet Corvette met its end by going over a steep embankment and landing several hundred feet down in a concrete bay around a small creek in Ohio.

The Corvette came off the road in an area known for speeding cars and hidden driveways, which is always a recipe for disaster. It's unclear, though, what caused the accident that destroyed the blue C5 (1997-2004 Corvette), but it's clear from the photos that the driver is lucky to be alive.

Anderson Township firefighters were called out around 2.30 pm to Bridle Road near Johnson Hills Park and successfully rescued the driver.

The driver was trapped in the car, which meant the rescue crew had to get down to the Corvette and remove sections of the vehicle, including the roof, to get to them. They then had to use a stokes basket and rope system. The patient was secured in a stretcher and manually hauled up by the crew.

Whether the car came neatly to rest in the concrete drain or had to be moved to gain access to the driver is unclear. We can see, however, that the door and the roof are removed.

The C5 generation Corvette has become an affordable enthusiast car, but it's also known for being a handful with its 5.7-liter V8 driving the rear wheels. The hydroformed box frame chassis is stiff, and the composite fiberglass body panels are more robust than commonly believed, but the safety features are genuinely old-school or nonexistent.

The base C5 Corvette arrived with 345 horsepower and increased to 350 hp in 2001. At the same time, the C5 generation's Z06 trim arrived with 385 hp, later increased to 405 hp.

This doesn't look like a Z06, but there's one less road-going C5 Corvette out there, that's for sure.