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tools during the procedure. DOT uses a different truck for each side of the tube, because the ceiling in the eastbound tube is three feet higher than the ceiling in the westbound tube. The taller truck therefore had a tight squeeze returning through the westbound tube. Paul and Zachary should have paid more attention to this fact.
    The crew had finished working on the eastbound tube. On the return trip to the office for their lunch break, Paul and Zachary chose to violate safety and rules, and rode on the high platform, facing backward, rather than climbing into the cab. Paul and Zachary learned one major reason for the rules when the truck turned into the westbound tunnel…
    Perhaps they had forgotten that this tunnel was three feet lower than the one they had just left. Perhaps their safety helmets made them feel invincible. They soon learned otherwise. When his head hit the entrance of the tunnel Paul was knocked off the truck to his death. Zachary was sitting lower than Paul and survived with minor injuries, earning himself an Honorable Mention.
     
    Reference: Daily Press, AP

D ARWIN A WARD : D OPE ON A R OPE
    Confirmed by Darwin
     
    16 F EBRUARY 2004, S IMI V ALLEY , C ALIFORNIA
     
     
    “The family that plays together, stays together.”
     
     
    Alan, a forty-three-year-old electrician, was hanging out with his seventeen-year-old son and the son’s girlfriend. They were feeling cooped up, so they hopped the back fence to play by the railroad tracks that ran behind it.
 
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    “Dope on a Rope” is also the search-and-rescue nickname for the practice of dangling a rescuer under a helicopter on a fixed rope, as opposed to a powered hoist, to assist a victim.
     
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    Alan thought it would be a blast to watch a shopping cart being dragged by a train. He tied one end of a twenty-foot rope to the shopping cart and the other to a full water bottle, which he planned to use as a weight.
    When an eighty-six-car Union Pacific freight train rumbled through at fifteen miles per hour, Alan stood behind the cart and hurled the bottle at the train. The bottle broke! So he quickly tied another bottle to the rope. Standing in front of the cart, he lobbed the bottle under the train, and gleefully noted that his plan had worked this time—until the shopping cart whipped into him and dragged him for more than a mile along the tracks, reportedly pulling up two spikes in the process.
     

     
    Alan was dead before the engineer could stop the train. A spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration said that this was “an extremely unusual occurrence.” Alan’s son told reporters, “He was just the funniest guy.”
    After the incident, Simi Valley Police Sergeant Joe May warned pedestrians not to loiter near train tracks.
     
    Reference: Los Angeles Herald-Tribune, Ventura County Star

D ARWIN A WARD : D EATH V ALLEY D AZE
    Confirmed by Darwin
     
    27 J ULY 2005, C ALIFORNIA
     
     
    Robert, thirty-five, was eager to hang out with the nudists at the Palm Springs campground, in a part of Death Valley where temperatures reached 136 degrees Fahrenheit. The track was rough but passable until he was lured into the Saline Mud Flats by the deceptively dry appearance of its cracked surface, which radiated heat in the baking sun. Within a few feet, the wheels of his VW Microbus sunk deep into the muck hiding just beneath the crust.
    Robert was miles from nowhere, surrounded by the bleached skulls of other animals that had become trapped in the mire. But he had plenty of provisions, so he waited for help to find him on the remote dirt track. After six days, he finally abandoned the microbus and began walking to a less deserted location where someone was more likely to pass.
    Luck was with him! As he was shaking the last drop of water from his bottle, help arrived in the form of fourteen-year-old British lads from the League of Venturers, who were training in search-and-rescue techniques. “He was crying and completely