Caught on video
You might find it hard to imagine anything more idiotic than dancing on top of a moving car or driving 140 mph on a highway at night. But that’s just because you’re old.
Teens around the world are proving that you can take idiocy to a new level with the help of the Internet. Rather than simply feeling satisfied about getting away with such reckless behavior and living to tell about it, teens are now filming their exploits and posting them on popular video-sharing websites like YouTube.
The big trend last year was “ghost riding,” which involves thrill-seekers setting their car in motion at a slow speed and then hopping on the hood or roof to dance while no one is behind the wheel. After a few seconds, they jump back behind the wheel before the car steers itself into a tree.
This year, filming yourself driving at dangerous speeds is the new pink. Teens who haven’t already killed themselves ghost riding hit the highway at night where they push their cars to speeds of 140 mph or more, driving with one hand and using their cell phone to film their speedometer with the other.
Unfortunately, many of these kids fail to consider that when you upload a video to one of the most popular websites in the world, it can be viewed by anyone, not just your stoner friends.
For example, police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., were able to arrest two teens in August who were spotted in their own homemade ghost riding video on YouTube. The kids weren’t too hard to track down, since the license plate of their car was quite visible in their video.
Just a few days later in Scotland, a teenager was identified and arrested based on a YouTube video that he made of himself driving his Ford Escort down a single-lane road at speeds of more than 140 mph.
Police are now encouraging criminals to embrace the digital age and upload videotaped evidence of all their wrongdoings. Contact your local police department to find out which publicly accessible websites are preferred in your jurisdiction.
A grave error
They say that drunken driving can lead to an early grave, and that almost turned out to be true for a German woman in August.
The 53-year-old had intended to pay her respects to a dead relative in the southern town of Mitterteich when she lost control of her car along a path winding through the graveyard. After smashing through several headstones and bouncing off a few tombs, her car finally came to rest inside someone’s grave.
Police had to come and pull her car out, at which point they discovered that the woman was a couple of Jägermeisters over the legal limit.
While she may have managed to cheat death, the woman now faces an even more ominous foe: the insurance company.
Only in Estonia
An Estonian man just can’t see the problem with his driving, even after being pulled over twice in the same week. Of course, it could be because he’s blind.
The 20-year-old’s first encounter with the law came when he was stopped for drunken driving. Police were surprised to find that the man also was blind and was operating the car based on instructions from a 16-year-old passenger who also was drunk.
Six days later, the man was stopped a second time, once again driving drunk, still blind, and this time being directed by three passengers.
He was charged with a misdemeanor the first time, but now police would like to throw him in jail and confiscate his car. They’d also like to know how a blind man was able to buy a car in the first place. And what kind of lousy drivers must his friends be if they think they’re safer with the blind guy behind the wheel?
