Carjacking is a crime that has long bedeviled South Africa. The annual numbers (whether rising or falling) are a constant in local headlines, there are public lists of the most notorious intersections, and there’s even a school devoted to teaching you the skills to safely avoid and escape the situation. Fortunately, it appears the driver in this video from earlier in the week did his homework, using a bold reverse maneuver in his Porsche 911 to escape a carjacking attempt in Johannesburg.
Captured on security cameras, the scariest part of the video is how normal things seem at the start. The driver pulls off a main road in Johannesburg and eases up to a gated driveway in broad daylight, but it’s possible he already senses something is wrong. We see two cars traveling in the same direction move into the oncoming lane at speed to avoid the Porsche as it turns, while a silver BMW pulls up right behind it and slowly drives around, stopping a few dozen feet past the driveway.
Suddenly, the BMW reverses to block in the Porsche, and a man hops out of the back seat with a gun pointed right at the driver. Despite this, in a split second he manages to throw the Porsche into reverse and hit the gas, stunning the would-be carjacker by smashing past the BMW to get back on the road.
The gunman waves his firearm halfheartedly, as if he can’t believe what just went down. He also looks like he can’t decide whether to keep trying and points the gun at the Porsche again. This apparently pisses off the driver even more, who feints left as he makes his escape and comes decently close to clipping the gunman.
To top things off, the genius getaway driver in the BMW almost leaves without his accomplice – truly the best and brightest here. Below is a second angle showing just how quickly the Porsche driver was able to react. Remember, when a manual transmission isn’t enough to defeat a carjacker, defensive driving will do the trick:
