2007 At-Risk Survivor

The stupidity displayed by the participants in the following tales stops short of the ultimate Darwin Awards sacrifice. Nevertheless, we salute the spirit and innovation of their misadventures.

A Slippery Slope 2007 At-Risk Survivor Unconfirmed by Darwin (1960's, Norfolk, UK) The small seaside town at the mouth of the river Yare keeps a modern lifeboat at anchor in the harbour, but the old lifeboat shed is nearby. Its cobbled slipway descended at a 30-degree angle straight into the river. Four hundred yards away, the harbour opens into the North Sea. The next stop is the coast of Holland. I was eight years old, and not afflicted by the degree of supervision that kids endure nowadays. That summer, a bunch of us decided it would be a great wheeze to take a discarded tractor tyre from the dump, and take turns curling up inside it while the others rolled us down the slipway into the river. The name of the game was to struggle out before the tyre reached the water. This provided several minutes of hysterical fun, until the inevitable happened. All hell broke loose as the lucky winner and the tyre rapidly made their way to open sea. The sight of the big yellow Coast Guard helicopter and its crew saving his ass went some way towards compensating for the pain inflicted upon mine by my dad that evening. MEDIA REFERENCES DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2012 Submitted by: Mike Clarke Reference: Eyewitness Account Share

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