It’s hot out there, folks. Climate change is whooping our a**. It’s buckling our roads. And it’s making our cheeses taste like s**t.
Now it’s making our summers so record-breakingly hot that Hungarian truck drivers are leaping off of bridges into the water below just to cool off, thus triggering rescue operations to save said Hungarian truck drivers.
A semi-truck was left abandoned on the shoulder of the A16 near Dordrecht, a city in the Netherlands. Its driver was nowhere in sight. Emergency vehicles raced toward the Moerdijk Bridge, accompanied by a police helicopter. The authorities were convinced they were responding to a suicide attempt.
They weren’t. It was just hot.
Trucker Leaps Off Bridge, Sparks Rescue Mission—Turns Out He Was Just Overheated
According to a statement released by the police on Instagram, a Hungarian trucker, fed up with the brutal heat of a Dutch summer, decided to ditch the sweltering cab of his rig, park on the highway shoulder, and leap off a bridge into the Hollands Diep for a swim.
When you hear the truck driver’s side of it, knowing how brutally hot this summer has been, leaping off the bridge seems reasonable. But the optics of it are, let’s say, maybe a little suicide-y.
As emergency services, including the KNRM sea rescue, fire brigade, and ambulance crews, descended on the scene, the man had already been fished out of the water by a passing boatman. The police, still under the impression this was a life-or-death crisis, were met with a soaking-wet but very much alive man who just wanted to cool off.
The impromptu dive earned the trucker a fine for parking illegally and bridge-jumping, and a hell of a story to tell his trucker buddies at rest stops all across Europe.
The post Trucker Jumped From Bridge, Triggering Rescue Mission—But It Was Just Really Hot appeared first on VICE.
