Having a car's hood fly up while driving is probably a frightening ordeal. It often smashes backward into the windshield with a violent, glass-cracking thump, rendering the vehicle unsafe to drive. Not everyone thinks that's the case, though. A dashcam video has caught a VW Jetta cruising a California road with its hood near-vertical blocking the windshield, but the driver keeps on driving. He was nice enough to turn on the hazard flashers.
The video shows a three-lane road cutting between houses and businesses with the Jetta cowering in the right-most lane, where it should be. The hood is pushed back into an upright position, and it's twisted out of shape. It's unclear what happened as it looks as if the front end is free of any damage. Hood latches have a two-step mechanism that often requires releasing a latch from the vehicle's front to open it fully. Improperly closing the hood could have caused this.
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Surprisingly, the windshield looks fine. There are no visible cracks obscuring the view, so the car might not have been traveling at that fast of a speed. It also looks like there's space underneath the upright hood for the driver to look out of, though it's far from safe. The car is traveling slower than the rest of the traffic, though, which is a smart move. The hood could further damage the Volkswagen.
It should go without saying, but if your hood flies up while driving, please pull over. It's extremely unsafe. It's also much cheaper to replace a bent-up hood than, say, an entire front clip after you rear-end another car because your forward visibility was a bit obscured by the large piece of metal. The video ends with the car still in the right lane cruising down the road, but we hope the driver made it to his destination without further issues.
Source: ViralHog / YouTube
