A young man in Mesa, Arizona has been lucky to escape serious injury after a car jack reportedly failed when he was under the vehicle.
Bodycam footage shared online by PoliceActivity shows police officers arriving on scene at roughly 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, August 11. They are presented with the man lying under the side of a white Honda Civic, not moving.
The quick-thinking officers decided the best course of action was to try and lift up the car to save the man. So they did just that, lifting up the car while a neighbor proceeded to pull him out. The officers reportedly took just three minutes to arrive on the scene and had they not arrived that fast, the pressure on the man’s chest may have become too great.
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Shortly after the man was pulled from underneath the Honda, paramedics and local firefighters arrived on the scene to lend their assistance.
While jacking up a car and placing it on jack stands may seem like a safe and easy process, it can be dangerous, especially if the jack stands fail (as some recent Harbor Freight ones have) or if the jacks slip out of position. In fact, people have been crushed and killed in incidents like this in the past.
When working on a car like this, it’s important to have some fail-safes in place just in case a jack or jack stand fails. If you’re taking off a wheel to work on the brakes, for example, it’s a good idea to place the wheel somewhere under the car to serve as a backup. Alternatively, you could use ramps to drive the car up on rather than jacking it up for things such as an oil change.