Portland Bumper Cars

My favorite part is when the first guy, after keeping the pedal to the metal and pinballing off of nearly everything on that street, yells "HELP!!" out the window of his car. Like anyone who just witnessed that wreck is gonna run over to his slip sliding car and stop it from crashing. Priceless.

What I don't get is the people standing in and near the street. A girl in Kent was hit by a car that hit the curb the other day. She lost her leg.

This looks like a curling competition. All that's missing is someone out in front of the cars with a broom.

Also the ironic thing is that since they actually built their light rail projects instead of bitching about them you don't need a car in Portland since you almost have too much public transportation.

DAMN. I love how the guy who pinballed off all the parked cars and a wall kept his foot floored on the gas the entire time. I swear we need some legislation passed to require all the Californians that move to Washington or Oregon to pass some minimal winter driving courses

Is this why they can't pump their own gas?

Just kidding, I'm sure I would be the worst slider ever, and that's why I just stay home and play video games when it starts to snow :)

Interesting reflection on how tied we think we are to our cars that people would risk driving on an icy hill. How many of the people in the video could have walked down to a bus stop or simply stayed home yesterday?

Ah, Portland in winter, where the city is full of hills, the streets are full of ice, and the cars are full of idiots.

That first driver was completely out of his mind. The only way I can understand that kind of behavior is if he decided after the first collision he wanted to make sure his car was totalled, and he didn't care about the property he damaged or lives he endangered in the process.

And yeah, on a per-capita basis, Seattle is doubtless no better. I remember a snowstorm back in the early 90s when there was video like this shot from the corner of 1st Ave and University. It was icy downtown, but cars were trying to negotiate the hills -- starting up and then sliding backwards, wheels spinning, until they hit something. In some cases cars were sliding from around I-5 all the way down University to 1st... where they collided with the cars that had the misfortune of being parked along the curb there. At the time the big condo (Harbor Steps? The one with the Wolfgang Puck restaurant) wasn't on the west side of the street -- there was just a hole there, with some chain link fence to stop people from falling two stories off the sidewalk to Western. There was one parked car that had been driven by repeated collisions up across the sidewalk and into the fence -- the video caught it as the final collision caused the fence to give way and drop the car into the void.

That was the same storm where traffic got on the 520 bridge but couldn't get off: the hi-rises had iced up so cars would get down into the center span but slide backwards as they tried to climb out. Eventually somebody noticed the mass of twised metal on the bridge and closed it, and the drivers hiked out.

For those of you familiar with Portland this was shot at 20th and Salmon in the Goose Hollow area.

And no, we don't all drive like that down here.

I made it to work, and home, without hitting anyone or anything. And I know of at least one other person who can say the same.

For those of you familiar with Portland, this was shot at 20th and Salmon in the Goose Hollow area.

And no, we aren't all that bad. I made it to work, and home, without hitting anything. At least four other people can claim that, I think.

My best guess is that this is in the upper NW area of town, an Escher-like absurdity where hills spill over into other hills in all directions, and nary a flat street is to be found. The angle and flat light most certainly don't do it justice, but the surreal result is mind-boggling.

Because this is shot from above it's hard to tell they're on a hill and it makes this look weirder than it probably is. Not a good time to be an insurer in the Pacific Northwest, I guess...

This is what happens when you permit all-nude dancing.

Wow. I'm imagining the thought process that convinced these people it's ok to drive on an icy hill: "I'll be fine - I have 4 wheel drive!"

This may be the most incredible video I've ever seen. It's like if lemmings ice-skated.