Each and every day, on the way to and from work, I drive past it.  Each day I feel less and less of a man for not accepting its challenge.  To some, it may look like a mere crosswalk, guarded by two equal and opposite islands of concrete.  To me, it is a big middle finger turned straight toward me by whoever hatched this devilish design.  Hit the jump for the jump.

Perhaps a different view of this will help me to explain my endless fascination with this particular crosswalk:

In this view, you can see the run-up, the ramp, and the gap.  That’s right, it looks like a jump.  Now obviously, there are posts in the middle, so it would have to be a two-wheeled, driver’s side only stunt, but it could easily work, right?

Why not?  (Note:  I faithfully recreated my Scion xB for purposes of illustration.  Truth be told, I wouldn’t dare attempt this stunt in anything but a disposable beater.  (Yeah, yeah, warm up your beater xB jokes now.))

Every day I consider the minimum speed required to clear the gap, the odds of getting caught by the police and cited, and the general idiocy of the very idea of trying to actually do it.  Every single day, twice, sometimes more, I drive past it.  My mind is beguiled.

I would be interested to hear the opinion of a physics aficionado as to how fast I would actually have to go in order to actually drive home with the suspension intact.  The measurements can be seen in this illustration:

So, to clear the gap, the tires would have to get a full 21 feet of air.  The ramp is 4 feet long, and rises to a height of 8 inches.  I’m thinking I would need to achieve 88 mph, just like Marty McFly, but I’m no scientist. 

This thing is obviously a good idea, so let’s not debate that.  The only debate here should be about which car to use and how fast to go. 

Here’s one more illustration just for fun:

 

Scott Ith is an Associate Editor with Hooniverse.com, but he also contributes to his own site NeedThatCar.com.  Head over there for more hooniganism.