Engineers all over the world just felt a pang of near panic, but then the immediate soothing calm that comes from knowing their work matters. This time that feeling came as a result of a cliff-side guardrail doing exactly what it's designed to do. In fact, this guardrail might've been worked a bit harder than it was designed to because it sits on a road where you shouldn't be speeding, and it just kept a rally car from taking a massive tumble.
Driver Tomasz Kasperczyk was competing in the Rally Islas Canarias when he experienced a brake failure. In the video above, you can see the passenger-side rear tire lock up. That doesn't help very much with a quick, tight right-hand turn. The car winds up sliding straight into the guardrail, which collects the race car and keeps it from exploring the rest of the Canary Island countryside.
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Later in the video, you can see just how close the driver and co-driver came to having their bad day become quite terrible. Thankfully, they exited the car, held a large "OK" sign to the helicopter capturing the action, and were able to nervously laugh about this event over a beer back in the paddock.
Hopefully, they raised that beer and toasted the engineers of the world. The math and physics geeks who make sure a random guardrail in the hills of the Canary Islands can keep a Ford Fiesta R5 from experiencing cliffside doom very likely saved their lives.
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