5 Common Movie Driving Practices that Will Get You Killed in Real Life

 

 
We all love a good driving scene in a movie, preferably one that involves an exciting car chase or even a jump between two skyscrapers. But sometimes, you have to question the validity of the driving skills that we see on display–would any of this even be possible, let alone safe, in real life? What would happen if you tried to pull a handbrake turn in the middle of a busy street, or run a thousand red lights trying to escape a villain? The chances are it wouldn’t end well! We have put together a few of the most commonly used driving practices in movies that, more likely than not, will get you killed in real life.

jumping between cars

People in movies will keep driving no matter what. So how many times have we seen the dramatic high-speed transfer of a human being from one car to another? Whether it is an action hero attempting to get a villain, a villain trying to get at a hero, or an attempt to save a hostage, they make it seem so easy for someone to jump out of one window and into another–all while traveling at 80 mph.

driving under a semi

We’ve seen it in The Fast and The Furious and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but let’s face it, not only would a car most likely not fit under a semi in real life, if you tried to do it, it would probably kill you.

bridge jumps

 

 
There’s nothing an action movie loves more than a dramatic jump from one bridge to another, across a gap in the freeway, or maybe even from one building to another. Even though there are a lot of professional stunt drivers who can pull this off, it should go without saying that anyone who tries this in a regular car on a regular road might not live to regret the decision.

rolling/flipping a car

 

 
Dramatic car flips or rolls like the one in this scene from Casino Royale make for excellent scenes in movies, but anyone who was involved in a crash like this would be unlikely to walk away from it as he does. Not only this, but the amount of rolls seen by the vehicle are just about impossible to achieve without using the special pumps that propel cars into the air for movie stunts.

not looking where you are going

Even though the rest of these driving practices usually only occur in action movies, there is one dangerous driving habit that is common for just about any driving scene in any movie–driving without looking at the road. How many times have you scene two actors talking in a car, and the driver spends little to no time actually looking where they are going? While the actors are usually in front of a green screen or on the back of a truck, if we tried driving like this in real life, we probably wouldn’t last long without having an accident! It’s for this reason that distracted driving is so dangerous–but we already know how we can put a stop to that.