I have never jumped a car on an opening draw bridge. There are no draw bridges in this area.
The car jumping thing really took off after the Dukes of Hazzard show started. I was too old to start killing cars that way, but my son got into some of that stupid stuff. He was more into jumping gravel piles locally. As far as I know, he didn't jump raising draw bridges, but he did live in Florida in his late teens/early 20s.....
When I was a kid there was a levee along Red river. I took a friend down there in my dad's truck. I was doing about 40 or 50 turned sideways to the levee and went over it gracefully. A few days later his parents call me over to look at their 4 door scamp. It was bent like a U, all 4 tires and the center of the floor pan were touching the ground.
I said "wow, what happened?" They said Trey took the car down on the levee like you did, went straight at it, launched it over the levee and belly flopped the car.
Best I have ever done is get my C10 long bed airborne about a foot or two while rattle and roll cleaning a gas tank.
About 25 yrs ago I had a 'winter beater' '72 Coronet Wagon that I jumped. A little back road in CT had this 'mound' on an otherwise flat, normal road. There was even a blinking light for it and a posted speed of 10MPH.....
Well, I had all of $50.00 into the wagon (including purchase price!) so, one day I let it rip and nailed that mound doing about 40.............
Don't know how high or how far I was air borne but, I was up long enough to panic, hit the brakes, see the speedometer drop to zero, then see the speedometer almost max out when I got off the brakes and floor it.......
There's no other way to put it, the landing HURT.
The wagon was bent enough that the doors wouldn't open. Both motor mounts broke, the rear bump stops above the axle were driven almost thru the frame rails. But, I was able to limp it home. With a little jerry riggin', I continued to drive the car another 6 months or so, but I kept all 4 wheels on the ground during that time.
Agreed, but more impressive than the actual jump was that he busted through the gate, and he didn't know exactly how wide the gap was going to be when he got there. A few seconds later and he would have been in the drink.
