Life

Driver Jumps Bridge As It’s Opening, Probably While Texting And Singing Along To Taylor Swift

#WTFlorida
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Another day, another ‘Florida Man’ story of some dude down in the Sunshine State pulling off something so asinine that you’re in disbelief when you read the headlines. In this incident, 29-year-old James Montano jumped a drawbridge in his SUV like he was in an action movie, no fux given. I like to imagine that just before that SUV decided to jump the bridge someone in the vehicle muttered the phrase “hold my beer“, but the fact of the matter is that it’s much more likely nobody was paying attention at all. The first sign that the driver was clueless and not paying attention is when the SUV absolutely demolishes the gates that go down, alerting drivers where to stop as the drawbridge opens. Then the swerve after the SUV makes the jump (and then gets stuck engine-down on the bridge), that’s when you get a sense that the driver didn’t have a friggin’ clue what they were doing, and just came back to reality.

Here’s the action once again in GIF:

WPTV reports:

Multiple cameras on the Flagler Bridge captured a driver, identified as 29-year-old James Montano, jumping the bridge as it was going up. Police say the jump was not the act of a daredevil, but more likely distracted driving.

“Basically it was a distracted driver incident,” explained Officer Philip Salm with the Palm Beach Police Department, “the individual was coming back towards West Palm and didn’t see the bridge arms coming down, it was suspected the guy was messing with his GPS.”

According to Salm, Montano is lucky the distraction didn’t cost him his life.

“The implications of what could have happened, had he hit at a different time or he hit the ramp and went over the side, you’re talking about a potentially fatal accident,” Salm said.

When’s the last time an action hero died in a movie while jumping a bridge? Not once that I can recall. The hero ALWAYS makes the jump, so I don’t know what the heck the cops are so worried about here. I guess I’ll concede that this is real life, and there’s a slight chance the driver doesn’t make it. Either way, we can go ahead and file this one under ‘WTFlorida‘.