3 Darwin Award Winners

Next Time Try a Taxi

2002 Darwin Award Nominee

Confirmed True by Darwin

(11 August 1999, Texas) Noel, 31-year-old Houston man spotted a truck

left running as its driver filled jugs with filtered water from a vending

machine. Little did he idiot realize that four children were still occupying

the truck. Noel hopped inside. The mother heard a scream, and turned to see

her truck speeding away.

Police soon spotted the truck, sparking off a two-hour chase on the

freeways of Houston. The chase came to a dramatic conclusion as the truck

reached a 150-foot overpass. With police in hot pursuit, the truck

accelerated from 75 to 90 mph, and Noel stuck his head out the window as he

steered towards the right-side rail. He shifted into neutral, and tried to

jump from the window, over the guardrail, and into the ocean below.

Noel failed to notice the chain link fence installed to prevent that

very occurrence. Just as the truck sideswiped the guardrail, the chain link

fence slammed into Noel's skull, ripping "what was left of him" out the

window. Adding insult to injury, his corpse was crushed by a large truck

that had been following close behind.

The young occupants of the car suffered only minor scrapes and

bruises.

Incidentally, if Noel had survived the impact with the chain link

fence, and the 15-story free fall to the water below, he would still have

been in trouble. The water was less than a foot deep beneath the overpass.

Chainsaw Slingshot

2002 Personal Account

(2001, Michigan) The following story was related to me during a

session of injury one-upsmanship. A casual acquaintance related an adventure

suffered by her husband.

A furious wind had knocked a susceptible tree limb across the

electricity lines behind the house, and the line was bent into an alarming

parabola. (Check -- is it a different curve?) Our hero Joe, not intimidated

by the thought of combining live wires, wet fallen branches, aluminum

ladders, and chainsaws, decided to remove the limb from the wire himself.

Enlisting the aid of a buddy, he balanced the ladder against the

taut wire, climbed up, fired up the chainsaw, and carefully commenced

cutting. Joe had almost managed to free the limb, and only one more cut was

needed before the entire limb fell to the ground, releasing the wire.

Those who watch Road Runner cartoons know what happens when a

tight wire is released. The final cut was made, the limb fell, and to Joe's

mystified dismay, the wire sprang back to its original position.

The force lifted the ladder several feet into the air, along

with its brave but surprised chainsaw-wielding occupant. The ladder slipped

away, and Joe fell against the wire, knocking the chainsaw into his face,

and missing his carotid artery by mere inches.

Our bleeding Darwin Award nominee managed to throw the chainsaw

away from himself, preventing further injury from that source, but no amount

of arm flapping could postpone his inevitable encounter with the ground.

Fortunately, Darwinian laws are not absolute, and Joe managed to

survive with a only broken leg and some stitches. Hopefully, he was also

left with the knowledge that what goes down must come up, and that some

things that should be left to train professionals -- even if you do own a

ladder and a chainsaw.

Fuzzy Fights Back

2002 Personal Account

(2002) I was helping my brother move his collection of amusing

newspaper clippings from his days as a journalism major, when we came across

one that's right up your ally. Mr. Fritz Dekker, a 41-year-old visitor to an

Amsterdam zoo, found his way to the bear exhibit. A bystander remembers

Fritz asking whether the bear was a male or female. Nobody knew, so Fritz

Dekker decided to find out for himself.

Fritz climbed over the 7-foot fence and jumped into the

enclosure. Despite urgent calls from the crowd, Fritz approached the bear in

question. The 390-pound adult was quietly occupied with a ball, and unaware

of the intruder. Amazingly, Fritz was able to take an unobtrusive peek under

the hood. Still perplexed, Fritz tried to determine the animal's gender

experimentally by delivering a good, hard kick between its legs.

Our friend Fuzzy turned out to be a male, and responded to the

assault in a typical male bear fashion. He roared in pain, and charged

towards Fritz, who attempted to defend himself with a hasty karate kick in

the general direction of the bear while he ran for the fence. This brilliant

defense tactic failed completely, and Fuzzy proceeded to occupy the next few

minutes mauling Fritz "Bear Ball Buster" Dekker to death.

Zoo keepers arrived promptly, but not promptly enough to save

the life of the ill-fated Fritz. Several rounds of tranquilizer darts later,

the subdued bear was taken to the onsite veterinarian. Fritz was, of course,

pronounced dead at the scene.

An autopsy shed no light on the reason for Fritz's actions.

There were no drugs or alcohol in his system, and his family reported that

he was not suicidal, nor did they know of any mental defects other than "an

exaggerated sense of bravado."

Apart from a pair of badly swollen testicles, the bear was

uninjured.