Crazy SUV Beats Gridlock By Driving Over Traffic

If you ever catch yourself thinking about how much of your life you spend stuck in traffic, stop. Don't go there. It's just too depressing. You're literally wasting away, sitting in one place, creeping along for no apparent reason, stuck in a vicious, soul-sucking work-home-work cycle. It's awful. So it was only a matter of time before somebody made the dream of going over that obstacle a reality. Well, sort of.

Remember this crazy futuristic bus in China that literally straddles traffic? Public transit is supposed to help beat traffic, but this goes the extra mile!

And perhaps taking a cue from this bus, designers at Thinkmodo have built the Hum Rider, another traffic-straddling creation that you don't have to take public transit to enjoy.

In true "Go go Gadget car" style, at the push of a button, the Jeep rises on four legs to pop up over the height of the cars in front of it.

Talk about living the dream, amirite? How many minutes would this shave off your average commute, do you think?

Mechanical effects engineer Scott Beverly of A2Zfx designed the Hum Rider, which features more than 300 feet of hydraulic lines powered by a single Honda gas-powered generator under the hood.

At its full height, the Hum Rider stands nine feet tall, with enough clearance to drive over standard cars. You'll note, however, that you don't see it driving over any vans or pickup trucks, so it would take a perfect scenario to really take advantage of the Hum Rider's extension.

Of course, it's a perfect scenario here because it's a PR stunt from a crew that has produced some of the most memorable viral ads in the past few years, like the real-life Carrie in a coffee shop. 

This stunt was developed to promote Verizon's Hum platform, a dongle that adds diagnostics, road-side assistance, location and speed tracking, and geo-fencing to any car made after 1996. 

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