Usually its Russia that’s on the receiving end of bad driving memes and videos, but last Saturday it was a Chinese motorcyclist who made all the wrong headlines.
In Nanchang, China, a motorcyclist collided with a truck attempting to turn into a three-lane road. The bike, caught between the truck’s cockpit and dump tray, then exploded, setting the motorcyclist on fire.
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It all looked a lot like a set-piece in a Michael Bay movie.
A motorcyclist in China escaped with his life, and a few more Instagram views, after his fiery crash went viral
Remarkably, the motorcyclist didn’t sustain any “life-threatening injuries” after stopping, dropping and rolling across the road to kill the flames. Passers by, and notably the driver, also assisted the biker.
“My truck was also on fire at that time. The door on my side could not open as the fire was darting over. I opened the door on the passenger side and jumped out. Then I rushed to the injured man (Chen) and rescued him,” he tells CBS.
The truck and bike then burned together for a further 40 minutes before local firefighters put out the blaze.
All this was remarkably captured on tape, and (obviously) published to social media.
ABC News, who was among the first publications to post the video on Instagram, received over 76 000 views in just over 16 hours on its post.
That upload then found its way onto Imgur in the form of a GIF, where it received a further 1.04-million views.
“As a child i thought stop, drop and roll would be a lot more relevant to adult life. Apparently I was just in the wrong country,” read Imgur’s top comment.
According to the aforementioned CBS report, China’s traffic police blamed the motorcyclist for travelling along the road too quickly, preventing him from slowing down in time.
We can’t really argue with that, but to be fair, we also expected to hear Michael Bay yelling “CUT” at some point too.
