Watch a Toyota Corolla Take a Surprise Jump After Extreme Heat Wrecks a Road
The Toyota's driver had no clue what was about to occur until it was far too late.
The idea of jumping a car sounds fun and exciting to many, but few people are prepared for something like that when it happens unintentionally. One unsuspecting driver in Missouri this week found out when their Toyota Corolla suddenly and without warning became the star of an airborne action stunt—all because of an unprecedented heat wave gripping most of the country.
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With our weather only getting hotter, it seems, one side effect that easily goes unnoticed is the deterioration of roadways. Sure, everyone's familiar with potholes that spring up after winter, when water that snakes into pavement cracks freezes and thaws, wreaking havoc on the road surface. But heat is equally bad for streets and highways, as you can see in this jump-tastic video from ABC News.
In Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the heat this week is sweltering enough that as you can see in the video above, a road suddenly buckles—just as a Toyota Corolla approaches. Within seconds, you hear a pop, and the roadway instantly becomes a sort of ramp. The force of the road morphing into that ramp is enough to shoot a nearby traffic cone into the air, just missing a passing Honda Accord. Meanwhile, the incoming Corolla's driver can’t react in time and drives over the newly reformed road without slowing down. They catch righteous air.
The Toyota sails briefly before landing nose first and ricocheting back up for a second, violent bounce. We don’t see what happens to the driver after that, but there surely is going to be some damage to the front of that Corolla.
We do see the aftermath of the roadway, a section of which is now tall enough to be nearly equal to the lower doors of a newer Nissan Altima seen on the video while an older version of the same car is stopped just ahead of the buckled roadway for an unknown reason. Sad to say, but this is potentially what could be awaiting all our daily drives amid extreme heat events in places that don't typically experience such temperatures. In other words, as summers get hotter, our roadways and bridges are in danger of more and novel damage.
Having experience in many forms of the automotive industry, Justin Banner has done more than just write about cars. For more than 15 years, he's had experience working as an automotive service technician—including a stint as a Virginia State Inspector—service advisor, parts sales, and aftermarket parts technical advisor (a fancy way of saying he helped you on the phone when you had trouble fitting your brakes over your aftermarket wheels and the like). Prior to his tenure as a full-time editor, Justin worked as a freelance writer and photographer for various publications and as an automotive content creator on YouTube. He’s also covered multiple forms of motorsports ranging from Formula Drift, drag racing, and time attack, to NASCAR, short course off-roading, and open desert racing. He's best known for breaking down complex technical concepts so a layperson can more easily understand why technologies, repairs, and parts should matter to them. At MotorTrend, Justin is part of the news team covering breaking news and topics while also working as a judge for MotorTrend Of the Year events and other major comparison tests.
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