The men of “The Bachelorette” Season 22 have been joining the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast to exclusively discuss how they’re feeling about the show’s current pause and share more of their stories.
Bachelor Nation stars Charity Lawson and Kathy Swarts have been interviewing the guys one by one, and this week, Brad joined to discuss an event that changed his life.
The “Bachelorette” cast member recently made headlines as a car accident he was involved in started circulating online. Now, Brad is opening up about what happened and sharing details about that life-altering event.
On the podcast, he expressed, “It’s tough for me because you know this was an accident that I was in 12 years ago, so I was 17 years old. So a very long time ago, but definitely impactful and definitely a big piece of my life. I wish that publications wouldn’t be grabbing onto something that’s so old and from my childhood.”
Brad then continued and explained what happened. He said, “The accident, like I said, was 12 years ago back when I was 17. I was with a friend of mine, childhood friend of mine, who was 18 and we were driving back from Florida coming to North Carolina.
And we were, I think it was the middle of the day, and I had nodded off kind of like you do back when you were in class… And when I came back up, we were right beside the interstate in the grass, started slowing down the car realizing what was going on, and we ended up striking a jersey barrier a little further down the road. Came to a stop and my first thought in my head was, ‘Oh, my gosh, we were just in a car accident.’
But not thinking anything was really serious. And so I reached over to check on my passenger Madison and realized that he was knocked out and unconscious.”
Brad continued, “While I’m doing that, I’m feeling something hot on my arm and I realized the whole backseat of the car’s on fire… And so I immediately went to getting us out of the situation, trying to find a way out of the car.
The best way ended up being through his window, so went out his window, came back in, unbuckled Madison, pulled him out.”
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He went on, “And a bystander came up that had seen everything going on, helped me carry him a couple hundred yards away from the car and then EMS came.
We tried tending to him, stabilizing him the best I knew how, and still at that point I didn’t realize exactly how serious the situation was other than my best friend’s unconscious and I’m just trying to make sure he’s okay… He ended up being paralyzed from the waist down.”
Brad explained that Madison is now in the political world and while he doesn’t share the same views as him, the two went through a lot together and it changed Brad’s outlook on life.
“I’d say the biggest thing is that life is very precious and very valuable. It can change in a moment,” he reflected. “In a moment you can have one thing going one way and be a complete 180.
So just not taking anything for granted, it’s pretty crazy how quickly things can change and not with any rhyme or reason. They just happen.
So I think just looking at it with a lot of gratitude is probably the biggest thing that’s changed. And also valuing relationships and friendships and seeing how much those can help you get through difficult things, and in your faith. I think if it wasn’t for my faith, I don’t know where I would be after that.
It was very challenging times and just dark places to be in, so yeah, definitely gave me a new perspective on life and God and His love for us and a lot of things like that.”
Listen to the rest of Brad’s interview in the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below, and tune in for more conversations with Taylor’s men!
