Daredevils have, for decades, jumped over buses using motorcycles and ramps. It’s a dangerous feat, made most famous by professional stuntman Evel Knievel in the 1970s.
A few intrepid adventurers with a taste for inversion have responded by jumping over motorcycles using a bus. The current world record holder for that piece of trick-driving oddity is 13, held by Hans Tholstrup. A picture of the event can be found at Way-Out Stunts, which also provides information about the 1980 effort:
The ramp was originally four feet high, but this was increased to seven feet with a curve similar to a water ski ramp. The protection for driver Hans was primitive, being a couple of straps holding him to the standard drivers seat and a life ring from a boat between him and the wheel.
The bus had no engine, being powered by a Landrover which pushed the vehicle to 65 miles per hour, before peeling off. Although the bus did get air borne, it came down heavily nose first crushing the last motorcycle. It almost went end over end as the impact caused the bus to fold in the middle and the tires blew.
Way-Out Stunts
But that, while certainly fulfilling an odd degree of balance to the stunt-jumping universe, is missing something. The bus wasn’t going under its own power, after all. And motorcycles were to be expected. What about jumping something a bit stranger, such as, say, lawn mowers?
In 2015, Paul Chapman of Narromine, Australia did just that. He described it as his mid-life crisis, but whatever the motivation he launched his bus into the air and over the mowers.
Well, over some of them.
Here’s the video:
Question of the night: What’s your most memorable public transit ride?
