An attempted carjacking in Chile last week only made it to that “attempted” status thanks to the quick thinking of the victim and their hefty vehicle.
Check out the dash cam video below, and hope you have this kind of quick thinking should you ever run into some Mr. Bean-esque carjackers:
I like how the intended victim does a little calculation as they backed up for a second, then stopped and threw the truck into drive. Maybe it was the uncoordinated way the two carjackers bumbled out of the small SUV, maybe it was the hesitation in the carjacker’s driver, but you can almost hear the truck driver’s thought process of, “Wait a minute, I think I can take these clowns.”
This attempted carjacking occurred on the Los Libertadores highway in the Colina commune, in the northern part of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, according to 13.cl. Footage of the escape also allowed the original owner of the thieves’ SUV to at least claim her car, though definitely not in the same working order as when it was stolen. The video went viral after it was posted to the Reddit board /r/JusticePorn.
Chile is considered fairly safe when compared to the violent crime rates of its neighbors in South America. Kidnappings and random murders are almost non-existent, according to the Overseas Security Advisory Council. Carjacking is a problem, however, and this very scenario, where a car is stopped on a freeway on or off ramp, is on the rise. Chile also has its own brand of carjacking called a portonazo, where crooks specifically target drivers pulling into or out of a porton, or car gate at places like apartment buildings and parking garages. In 2017 there were so many high profile portonazo carjackings that the government assigned a special task force to handle the problem.