The WSB Traffic Team has covered some crazy things over the years — trucks spilling chicken guts, a zebra on the Downtown Connector, plane crashes, a 500-year flood, Snowmageddon. But here is a new one that may out rank all of those in stupidity: car surfing.
Smilin’ Mark McKay was filling-in for me in the WSB Skycopter during PM drive one day when the Traffic Team noticed heavy police activity on I-285 in DeKalb County. Some internal GDOT notes stated unofficially that the cause for this was a man who had been injured while car surfing.
If you have never heard of the daredevil act, car surfing is what it sounds like: a person riding on the outside of a car, while it is in motion. A quick search on YouTube will illuminate you as to what this looks like, while also dimming your optimism for the future of the human race.
I reached out to DeKalb PD to find out what exactly happened on Tuesday, March 13th, and they confirmed the Traffic Team’s worst suspicions. DeKalb PD started receiving calls at 5:04 p.m. of a male on a hood of a vehicle — in traffic — on I-285/southbound, south of Memorial Drive. They immediately then received calls about a man laying in the road, with a bloodied head, 10 feet away from a vehicle. Some witnesses actually thought the injured man had been run over.
When DeKalb police and rescue arrived, they found the 28-year-old man laying on the ground. The police report states that the offending vehicle came to a sudden stop and threw the man from the hood and onto the pavement. The ambulance transported him to the hospital in moderate to critical condition and he was not charged at the time of the report.
But the perplexing behavior did not commence scot-free. Police did arrest the woman driving the car and not only charged her with reckless conduct, but also drug possession. That could explain some of this.
In our years covering traffic, we have never knowingly reported on a car surfing injury and we certainly haven’t seen one on an interstate. The time and place of this particular instance make the act itself even more ridiculous. A car surfer is not restrained, obviously, so driving on I-285 in stop and go traffic, naturally, would highly increase one’s chances of being thrown from the vehicle. Car surfing is already extremely dangerous, but trying it when a vehicle is unlikely to keep a constant speed and when there are so many other cars around is insane. That makes about as much sense as trying to fly a kite inside a house.
DeKalb PD spokesperson Sheira Campbell has about as much experience with this kind of thing as our Traffic Team.
“Car surfing on I-285? No! This is a first,” was her response when I asked her if she had seen this before. In fact, she told me she had to read my email twice to make sure she understood what I was asking. My reaction was the same when McKay told me about it the next day.
The emergency response to the car surfing crash and the ensuing investigation blocked several lanes and jammed even worse an already ugly I-285 Inner Loop ride. Atlanta traffic is bad enough without any unforced errors.
At this point, the end of human existence may be coming into view for you. How could people do something so stupid, right? But here, enjoy a nice, warm glass of optimism. The police report also stated that several witnesses to the car surfer’s spill stopped and rendered aid until the first responders arrived.
Please share this with the young, daring people you know. The YouTube videos of this are typically of people younger than the 28-year-old in this case. But young drivers and passengers are the most likely to take the risk. I remember in high school driving 50 feet in a church parking lot with my brother standing in the passenger door well and the door ajar. A family friend brought hellfire and brimstone on us with more passion outside than we ever saw in the sanctuary. We were going 10 mph in a parking lot. But we never did it again. Don’t car surf, please. Go take some lessons and hang 10 in the waves with the real surfers.
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