We’ve seen some pretty weird things happen, but a car traveling in reserve on public roads isn’t exactly a common sight.
This short clip appears to show an older Chevrolet Impala driving in reverse on a multi-lane road. Little else is known about the incident, but it apparently occurred in Minnesota and went on long enough that a driver decided to capture the bizarre event on their smartphone.
Needless to say, this is a horrible idea as cars are designed to be driven forward – not backwards. While a single reverse gear will keep the speeds relatively low, there’s still the potential for a dangerous accident as the driver is presumably looking over their shoulder the whole entire time.
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This makes the task of driving significantly harder and you see the driver is straddling two lanes. That being said, it appears they’re doing a decent job for something so stupid.
There’s no word on why the driver thought this was acceptable, but at least they used the hazard lights. It also remains unclear if the driver was eventually pulled over by police, but hopefully someone used their smartphone for something other than recording video.
Besides the obvious safety issues, there’s the mechanical side of things. A few years ago, Autoblog talked to GM’s Executive Director of transmission engineering and he who said “We don’t recommend going fast in reverse.” However, Jim Lanzon also noted “We put a lot of attention, in terms of design and analysis, toward the reverse gear – as much importance on that gear as the forward drive gears.”
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