James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Michigan, was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."

The Arizona Highway Patrol, when they came upon a pile of smoldering metal imbedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road, at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what had happened.

It seems that a former Air Force Sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO unit, (Jet Assisted Take Off unit, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra `push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert, and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO! Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250 and 300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve.... The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to slow the car.

Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from the steering wheel.

Note: this story is widely held to be apocryphal.

Up here in Michigan, seems some poor fella thought it would be a good idea to "move" a downed wire from his car. Newspaper reports it took a FULL MINUTE of neighbors whacking away at him with a 2x4 to free their freshly fried former friend from the fatal flashing.

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