Turns Out a Ford F-150 Can Handle an Epic Jump Better Than Its Driver

The driver broke his back in the process

A Ford F-150 Raptor, which was part of an epic jump where a driver broke his back
Stunt driving in one of these (or any vehicle) is not recommended, unless you're a professional.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Have you ever watched a movie with great driving scenes — maybe Drive or Bullitt, maybe one of the Fast & Furious films — and thought, “damn, those stunts look cool”? Perhaps you’ve even been tempted to take one of them through the paces of a death-defying stunt. A word of advice: maybe don’t? Even trained stunt drivers can encounter tragic ends while going about their jobs.

And even if your car makes it through whatever you’re doing intact, it’s possible that you might not. That’s what a man discovered when he attempted an epic jump in his Ford F-150 Raptor. As Jalopnik reports, after the truck and driver both landed, the truck emerged unscathed. The driver, not so much.

As Caz, the guy who attempted the stunt, wrote on Instagram, “My dumbass decided to overdo it with a stock suspension and now I have a T12 compression fracture. I’ll be taking a break from jumping for the rest of the year.”

For readers unfamiliar with the term, the T12 is a vertebra, and Caz broke his in three places. According to Autoblog’s article on the impact, Caz was driving at close to 60 miles per hour when he hit the jump — and if you watch the video, you’ll see the F-150 come back to earth with a mighty thump.

Thankfully, this was a case of an injury looking like a cautionary tale rather than something more tragic. But maybe the next time you’re tempted to try out a stunt jump, ask yourself the question: is this worth breaking my back over?

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