Watch: Dramatic Video Shows Lumber Avalanche Punt Car Off Freeway
An Uber driver’s dashcam captures the terrifying moment a car gets hit by a fast-moving wooden wave, sweeping it right off the road.
You might think you’re watching a clip from Final Destination, but the harrowing video you’re going to see is 100 percent real life. Uber Driver Derek Gooderham was driving his Tesla Model 3 on Interstate 83 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when all of a sudden, Gooderham noticed a truck carrying a pile of lumber on I-81 above him hit a guardrail.
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“Once we saw the truck was sliding, once it hit the guardrail, the whole load it was carrying just snapped off and it just came barreling down,” Gooderham told ABC27. From there, the pile of lumber spilled onto the road, completely enveloping a car in front of him and bum-rushing it right off the road. The entire incident was captured on the Model 3’s built-in camera system.
Miraculously, the driver of the vehicle that was swept off the road was okay. “I just saw him come out of the car,” said Gooderham. “He was staggering up, raised his hand up, which I was assuming he was signaling that he was okay.” The driver may have been fine, we’re fairly certain his car was completely lumber-jacked up; we can make that joke because the driver was alright, so save your emails!
As for Gooderham’s vehicle, it came out of the incident completely undamaged. He credited the braking system in his Tesla for helping him come to a stop just in time to keep him out of the wooden chaos. “Once I realized the incoming danger, I just slammed on my brake and I don’t even remember moving to the side of the road,” said Gooderham.
It wasn’t lost on Gooderham that things could have ended much worse. “Had I been going on just a little bit, maybe like one or two miles per hour faster, I probably could have potentially gotten impaled,” he said.
It was extremely lucky that the driver of the wood-slapped vehicle, Gooderham, and his Uber passenger all came out of the incident unharmed, although we doubt any of them are going to be knocking on wood anytime soon.
Andrew Beckford’s passion for cars started as a middle schooler when his friend Richie explained how an internal combustion engine works. He was bitten by the bug and the rest, as they say, is history. He dug deep into the tuner scene and eventually wrote for Turbo Magazine, Import Tuner, Super Street. He covered car shows, feature builds, and reviewed racing games for those magazines in addition to covering motorsports including Formula Drift, Indy Car, and F1 for his personal blog. Eventually Beckford joined MotorTrend to cover the daily automotive news beat. Besides being a gearhead, Beckford has been a gamer since the ’80s and is a huge fan of the arcade racing games of the ’90s like Daytona USA, SEGA Rally, and Ridge Racer. Beckford’s a movie buff as well, especially comic book films from DC and Marvel. When car culture crosses over with gaming and entertainment, rest assured Beckford is aware of it. In addition to serving as a consultant on a “triple A” racing titles, he’s reviewed major racing games such as Forza Motorsport, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, F1, and more. He’s also interviewed blockbuster directors including Steven Caple Jr. (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) and Neill Blomkamp (Gran Turismo). His biggest profile to date was with Robert Downey Jr. on his love affair with cars and his show Downey’s Dream Cars on MAX. Beckford’s profile of Downey Jr. was the first print cover story written by an African American in MotorTrend’s history. Along with KJ Jones, Andrew Beckford also heads up MotorTrend’s celebration of Black History Month by spotlighting diverse voices in the automotive industry and motorsports. Beckford’s first car was a 1982 Nissan Stanza affectionately named “Stanley” by his late mother.
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