I once had the occasion to rent a car and drive it around on a fine Sunday afternoon. The afternoon was so fine, so inspiring to my pedal-mashing sensibilities, that on a whim I decided to take the car as close to airborne as I could over a rather steep hill.
I ended up catching a little too much air, and bottomed-out the car pretty hard. Upon landing with a loud crunchy thud, all the dash lights went out, the power steering died, and I had to wrestle the car off the road in quite a hurry.
Sitting there, miles from home, on the day of the week when it would be hardest to get a tow and make other transportation arrangements, and worried about what I had done to the car (I was sure it was really messed up based on the noise and the behavior), I was a bit panicked for a second there. After a moment's reflection, I decided "what the hell" and turned the key in the ignition to see what would or wouldn't happen.
And the damn thing started right up, with nary a complaint or anomaly. I deduced that the shock of bottoming-out must have crashed the computer and killed all the electronics, and the good old "reboot and see what happens" actually worked!