If there were an automotive version of the Darwin Awards, this man’s attempt to drive his car off a tow truck would, at the very least, be eligible for an honorary mention. Because it’s hard to imagine any way this could have potentially worked out well for the man behind the wheel.
Driving a car out of a tow truck’s grasp would be a challenge pretty much anywhere on Earth, but it was doubly so for the man in the video, which appears to take place in Great Britain; his car, apparently, had been scooped up not by one of the American-style trucks that grabs the front tires with solid metal bars, but by one of the flatbed rigs so often favored in Europe. In case you’ve never seen one in action, these trucks use a crane and a quartet of straps to lift an offending car straight off the ground and onto a flat platform several feet off the ground. (If you want to see one in action, check out this video.)
In other words, even if everything had gone according to plan—well, let’s not lie, “plan” is probably being generous—this driver would have still have plummeted a good three, four feet from the ass end of the flatbed to the pavement, presumably damaging his aging compact beyond drivability…and thus, ironically, forcing him to require a tow truck.
Of course, things didn’t go according to plan. Instead, the driver wound up putting on quite the little show for the assembled crowd of tow truck drivers and general passers-by.
