When two-ton automobiles start rolling uncontrollably, the best option is usually to get the heck out of the way. But this guy in Canada did the opposite when his Mitsubishi Outlander started rolling down a boat ramp and into the sea: He jumped right into the path of his vehicle and nearly paid a dear price.
I think it may be just a general instinct when your car starts rolling to try to jump in and stop it, but it’s important to remember that even a slow-rolling vehicle can be extremely dangerous thanks to the law of conservation of momentum.
Perhaps getting out of the way is exactly what this man in Port Moody, British Columbia was trying to do last Wednesday when he jumped from his boat. But he didn’t quite succeed:
Staying in the boat would have been the safer call, but in any case, the results, per the Vancouver Sun, were minor injuries to the man and a sunken vehicle. Here’s a look:
This all went down as the driver pulled his boat out of the water with what looks to be a Mitsubishi Outlander—specifically, a plug-in hybrid model according to Josh Bishop, who posted the video above to Facebook and who lives in nearby Coquitlam. He was hanging out on a dock watching folks launch their boats into the water and load them back onto trailers, when he noticed that this particular vessel’s propellor was down, and that it was scraping. To fix this, the driver got out of the car.
“When he got in the boat to lift the prop up the only thing holding the trailer from moving was the prop, then it all went in,” Bishop told me over Facebook messenger. Apparently the vehicle hadn’t been put in park, and its emergency brake hadn’t been set.
Anyway, Bishop says the SUV was later recovered from the body of water that feeds into the Straight of Georgia near Vancouver, but it unfortunately caught fire. Presumably, the source of the flame was the battery pack from the plug-in hybrid system, but that’s not entirely clear.
In any case, even if his car is both wet and charred, this man is lucky to be alive.