That blurry figure you see flying through the air in the lead photo is not a super hero although after you see what he lived through in this disaster of a failed motorcycle jump, you’ll think he is invincible. The man’s name is Jumpin’ John Holland and he became a bit of a local hero in South Dakota doing motorcycle stunts. As his fame grew, so did his testicular fortitude. The culmination of this bravado came in 1984 when Holland talked a Chevy dealer into lining up 50 brand new Chevettes and declared he was going to jump over all of them on his motorcycle. There were a couple fatal flaws in his plan.
Those flaws started with the bike that Holland was on (not fast enough), continued on with the ramps he was to jump off of and onto (trajectory wrong, not well constructed), and then was topped off by the safety equipment he was wearing (neck parachute deployed during jump and made a calamity into a disaster). (Click here to see still photos of the failure….they are awesome, too)
As you’ll see in the video below, Holland comes off the launch ramp and it becomes immediately apparent that things are going to end badly. The bike was flying far too low. When Holland’s parachute deployed (why the EFF was he wearing one again?!) and yanked him off the bike. Holland’s body pinwheeled over four cars, destroying them. At first blush you’ll be convinced that the guy was killed. It looks like curtains. For whatever reason, Holland lived. No idea for how long or if he is still walking among us, but Holland didn’t end up in a pine box on that fateful day in 1984.
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A GUY LIVE THROUGH ONE HORRIBLY PLANNED, FAILED STUNT JUMP!
what did he think the parachute would do?
Isn’t the 5th car in line the “Bad Seed” Chevette?
Reminds me a bit of this
http://youtu.be/tpUMSarCSQw
Doomed to fail from the start
Same thing happened at the snake river canyon.
And wow a person can flatten the roof on a chevette ,probably made the front pulley and timing gear fly off too , that was the death most chevettes.
The whole thing looked sketchy. Was the landing platform sitting on 55 gl drums?
And was that Christopher Walken at the end?
You f****r, you made me bout shoot coffee out of my nose!
Grew up here in South Dakota and never heard of the guy. Must have been real local to Sioux Falls.
Short career doing that stuff, Yikes!