February 26, 2016
Courtesy/Imgur
A car crosses the Ben Franklin Bridge with its hood up in this still image from a gif posted on Imgur.
Anybody who drives has thought about the possibility.
There you are, cruising along in your car, when suddenly you can't see the road anymore.
Many drivers have experienced the fear, momentarily, when a huge truck passes by in the opposite lane during a heavy rainstorm, splashing 100 gallons of runoff onto your windshield and turning it into a kaleidoscope. Or, perhaps the wipers go out in a thunderstorm (or you haven't changed them in five years). Or drifting snow obliterates your vision. It happens.
Or, the granddaddy of similar fears: The hood of your car decides to go up while you are cruising in traffic at 55 mph. On a bridge.
It happens.
Reddit user reebzor on Thursday afternoon posted a video of a station wagon – with New Jersey plates – crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia with a less-than-ideal view of the roadway. The car appears to have several people in it.
The footage was captured from the inside of a PATCO train crossing the bridge at the same time.
Yes, the hood was up, and the driver, apparently sneaking a view under the hood, was moving at a decent enough clip to outrun the PATCO train. No blinkers. But at least in the outer lane.
If that wasn't hair-raising enough, then there are the comments from Reddit users, who used it to take potshots at drivers from the other side of the bridge:
"Can't exactly pull over to close the hood on the bridge, props to them for not wrecking. And to the hinges for somehow holding that thing on," user beefox wrote.
"I can't believe they are actually even going faster than the train over the bridge!" wrote user TheWarpedOne.
"This guy had a car full of kids and was going 40+mph without hazards on or anything," reebzor, the poster of the video, commented, opening the door for user Rsubs33 to write:
"He has Jersey tags on, as a Pennsylvania driver I interpret those as hazards."
"It's illegal to be driving with hazards on in New Jersey," pointed out user spartan-may.
"Probably illegal to drive with your hood up, too. Might as well signal to other drivers that you're a moron in the meantime," added user TerdSandwich.
To which VailR replied: "Jersey plates are all the signal I need."
Let's hope this Jersey driver made it to wherever they were headed safely, and that this never, ever happens to us.
