Back in the Seventies in Toronto, teenagers used to grab on to the back of a bus or car and hitch a ride, sliding along in the snow. Naturally, the laws of physics caught up with the daring kids and there were some deaths. It was great fun until it wasn’t. As you might expect, the city’s police began cracking down on the action and it ceased to be a thing.
Just because common sense prevailed doesn’t mean that it applies everywhere. Meet German speed freak Dirk Auer. This guy takes “bumper hitching” to a whole new level, attaching himself to all sorts of speedy machines and gliding along on some crazy looking roller blades. This newest video of Auer in action features him being towed along by a Dodge Challenger SRT8 to about 200 km/h.
This guy is nuts!
Since when has common sense prevailed? This stunt is insanity. Just because some guy wears leathers and a helmet does not make it professional, or newsworthy. This stunt did not stop in the 70s. It is still attempted today. You might interview ER teams for the other side of this story. You mention that sometimes it does go wrong, and deaths have occurred. Sometimes it goes even more wrong than that – Stunt Guy suffers a catastrophic brain injury, ending up in a wheel chair for life, fed through a tube in his stomach, trying to communicate through grunts, locked in a broken and uncooperative body.
The trouble is that in the image above, Mr Auer is wearing leathers covered in sponsors’ logos. That implies a level of acceptability. You know that kids will pick up on that and want to try this at home on a Friday night. So please stress the danger when a human body (helmeted or not) comes to a sudden stop against another vehicle, a lamp post, or curb. The brain continues on at the original speed, making contact with the sharp spiky inside of the skull, resulting in many different injuries including brain shear or Diffuse Axonal Injury. Considering that outcome has to be part of the decision to perform this stunt, which I am sure Mr Auer has done while training hard, learning how to fall and roll should it go wrong, and knowing that some things may unltimately be out of his control. That is the other side of this story, which also needs to be told.