Everything about this was a bad idea.
It is not wise to mess around with Earth's natural destructive forces. You may be tempting your own fate by doing so. Especially when it comes to oceans or other large bodies of water. When the seas get rough, that is also when they are at their most dangerous.
Case in point this 2017 video from California. This is the north jetty of Humboldt Bay and it regularly gets hit with rough surf and high waves. These waves are extremely dangerous since one can easily wash a person off the jetty and drown them.
Which is why bystanders filming the nearly 20-feet high breaking waves were a bit stunned to see a pickup truck driving out onto the jetty, directly into the breaking whitewater! As you can probably guess, things do not go well for the driver of this pickup as his truck gets slapped around repeatedly by nature's wrath.
It goes without saying, but this man is lucky to be alive after a stunt like that. The first wave that slapped his truck should have been a warning. Why he did not throw that truck into reverse immediately, we will never know. However, he persisted forward and eventually his truck became stranded out there. How he managed to not get washed off the jetty or smashed by the pickup truck is probably nothing less than a miracle.
Lost Coast Outpost wrote further on their website that bystanders were just as shocked as we were at the man's actions. Tyler Whiteside is the one who shot this video of the truck getting stuck and the eventual rescue.
"I thought he might be suicidal until I saw the Arkansas plates," Whiteside told the site. "He just didn't know."
Fortunately, some of the bystanders called 911 and alerted the Coast Guard. Sending the helicopter was viewed as the only viable solution because any other rescue attempt would be too dangerous due to the crashing waves.
Regardless of the fact the man was clearly not from the area, we are still wondering what was going through this guy's head. Why on Earth did he think driving out into those waves was a good idea? We tried to dig up more information on this incident and came away with nothing. We are curious if he got hit with a bill from the U.S. Coast Guard for this rescue. After all, those choppers are not cheap to fly, and it stinks the rescuers had to put their lives on the line for an entirely avoidable incident.
The lesson here is, do not mess around with nature. Use a little common sense and you can avoid dangerous situations like this one during your outdoor adventures.
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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