What a complete dumpster fire…
YouTuber Street Speed 717 says he’s facing a long list of criminal charges for jumping his brand new Ram TRX over a creek on private property, among other stunts. I covered this stunt before and called him out for being a reckless idiot, likely damaging the truck frame and probably more. The guy has also jumped a Ford Raptor over the same creek as well as a Dodge Challenger made to look like the General Lee plus wearing big mud tires – a stunt I didn’t cover because I figured you’d all had enough of the outright stupidity of this guy. He also lit his trashed Ram TRX on fire just to get YouTube views and some of that sweet, sweet online attention. Maybe he huffed a lot of paint thinner as a kid? Now the guy’s in trouble for more than just trashing his own vehicle and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving individual.
Check out the original article about the Ram TRX jump here.
According to the YouTuber, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has filed 2 counts of disturbing waterways or watersheds, 6 counts of allowing poison to fish, 6 counts of littering near waters, and 4 counts of running a vehicle in any stream. The guy then just goes off about how the water he jumped and drove through on multiple occasions, which he documented on his YouTube channel, is at most 12 inches deep and so it must not be a habitat of any kind. He’s never seen fish or turtles, so his argument is just so like airtight and stuff, you know? Seems like a weird thing to say, but as you can see starting at about 7:00 in the included video he makes that argument most passionately.
For the guy’s sake, I hope he has a good attorney, because if he goes into court with that kind of argument he’s probably toast. Of course, I’m not a lawyer and wouldn’t dream of giving anyone else legal advice, it’s just that it seems self-evident this discount Jackass team member doesn’t know anything about ecosystems or biology (not to mention physics – more on that later).
How this shakes out remains to be seen, but let me give everyone a little tip: if you’re going to do something and you’re not sure if it’s legal or not, you might not want to put it on YouTube or any other social media platform. Believe it or not, government authorities do spend time online, so you might get caught while handing all the evidence over to them with a nice bow on top. This even applies to the street shutdown channels YouTube allows, even though they glorify illegal behavior – go figure.
I get it, this guy is really desperate for attention. But has he ever thought of doing something positive to get recognition instead of destroying an expensive truck a lot of people would kill to own? Stunts like that make this guy come across as entitled and spoiled, like the kid who got 33 presents for Christmas every year and complained it there were only 32.
If you want to hear all the charges in detail, the guy reads them out online. I think he’s trying to get sympathy from his viewers. Maybe he’ll start a GoFundMe campaign for his legal defense. Some of his 1.14 million subscribers would probably contribute. And maybe he’ll learn something from this whole situation, but I wouldn’t count on that since the video after this one is him jumping a Ram TRX again.
Some of Street Speed 717’s “buddies” (I think they’re more like admirers trying to impress him) decided to respond by trying to harass an dox me online, although they couldn’t quite figure out how to do either. Apparently, I touched a nerve by pointing out how idiotic it was to place dumbbells in the TRX’s payload to even out the weight distribution (demonstrating his extensive knowledge of physics), as well as jumping the truck in the first place, among the many other harebrained things in that video.
People have also complained that we’re giving this guy exposure. I can see why they’re concerned, but the thing is the best way to defeat bad ideas is to expose them, not try hiding them away. I believe most people will find Street Speed 717’s behavior so reprehensible they’ll quickly conclude he’s an idiot. Sure, some will consider him a sort of hero, but they’ll be exposing themselves for celebrating recklessness.
