That is behind her now, after a remarkable recovery with support from her extended family, allowing her to graduate from Auckland University's Manukau campus.
The ordeal also appears to have given her a strange bonus which she finds hard to fathom other than through her Christian religion.
"Something was triggered in that accident and a creative side of my brain was released - I'm not into poetry and all of a sudden I was writing poetry and started painting.
"It was weird, I couldn't even draw a stick figure straight [before]."
The car crash was by no means her first serious test in life.
Becoming pregnant at 19 with the first of her two sons helped to set her straight after years of waywardness in which she admits to bullying and stealing her way through school.
Marrying the boy's father, Sonny, who is now a South Auckland police sergeant, and returning to religion paved the way for rehabilitation cemented by university studies.
She became a primary school teacher helping Pasifika youngsters fulfil the dream of forebears who migrated here for a better life for their children.
Mrs Iosefo was pregnant again in 2009 when the family lost 13 relatives in the Samoan tsunami.
But by March last year she was back at university with a masters degree in sight before the car crash interrupted her studies.
Although she was discharged from hospital on the day of the crash, she was unable to sleep for several nights, so reported to a concussion clinic where she was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury.
Neurologists found damage to the frontal lobe through which messages enter the brain, scrambling her thoughts and words.
"A doctor told me that normally when messages come into your brain they go through a certain pattern, but in my case, the filing clerk was away on holiday."
After persuading her academic assessors to grant a six-month extension to her dissertation, a neuropsychologist told her to focus on small targets, "so I started getting seven words down, then I managed to get growth from there".
Her "filing clerk" eventually reported back for full-time duty and she managed to get the 20,000 or so words of her dissertation into the right order within 12 months of the crash, allowing her to graduate with her masters degree in September.
Now she is set on gaining a doctorate, which she believes would never have been possible had Auckland University not established a southern campus in Otara 14 years ago.
Her doctoral thesis will be entwined with her voluntary work for a church-sponsored group called the Grace Foundation which eases female prison inmates back into the community.
Overcoming odds
*Fetaui Iosefo suffered a traumatic brain injury after smashing her head through a car windscreen in March 2013.
*The injury scrambled her thoughts and words until her brain recovered.
*Filed her 20,000-word education masters degree dissertation in March this year.
*Graduated from Auckland University's Manukau campus in September.
*Hopes to complete doctorate within three years.
