Anyone care to admit this was them? Off the edge of a cliff and recovery from Matt's Offroad Recovery.

[Daveykid]

I think you have to do a lot of wheeling and then look at the video to realize that in never, ever does sketchiness any justice. Been wheeling Jeeps for 20 years and this video had my skin crawling numerous times with 6000# above them with sketchy rocks allegedly holding it up and extremely questionable park and parking brake function. Shiver me timbers.

I've been watching Matt since they were Winder Towing and it seems as though they used to do mostly simple recoveries. Over the years I think they've had to up their game in order to gain and keep more subs. Obviously things have gotten more dangerous but he always seems (to the untrained eye) to have things safely under control. This one bothered me a bit because it seems like he broke a few of his own safety rules. Climbing under the vehicle a couple times without tying himself off like he did made me nervous, all of them standing in such close proximity to the steel winch wires that could snap and **** them, taking unnecessary risks for a totaled and valueless vehicle (he even tried to justify it in the video by explaining how it's not about saving a vehicle but cleaning up a mountainside) and squeezing the big truck through the narrow passage. There could be a LOT of behind the scenes preparation that we don't see that assures them a safer recovery and therefore gives the appearance of greater danger, but I doubt it.

Once you get to know the "family" and you see how the recoveries have changed over the years you have a greater sense of concern.

 

[f1racer328]

I've been watching Matt since they were Winder Towing and it seems as though they used to do mostly simple recoveries. Over the years I think they've had to up their game in order to gain and keep more subs. Obviously things have gotten more dangerous but he always seems (to the untrained eye) to have things safely under control. This one bothered me a bit because it seems like he broke a few of his own safety rules. Climbing under the vehicle a couple times without tying himself off like he did made me nervous, all of them standing in such close proximity to the steel winch wires that could snap and **** them, taking unnecessary risks for a totaled and valueless vehicle (he even tried to justify it in the video by explaining how it's not about saving a vehicle but cleaning up a mountainside) and squeezing the big truck through the narrow passage. There could be a LOT of behind the scenes preparation that we don't see that assures them a safer recovery and therefore gives the appearance of greater danger, but I doubt it.

Once you get to know the "family" and you see how the recoveries have changed over the years you have a greater sense of concern.

Aren’t all of his winch lines synthetic? They’re the Badlands winches from Harbor Freight. I have the same winch on my LR4.

 

[ryanjl]

Despite the many shortcomings, the LR3 and LR4 appear to be extremely safe vehicles in accidents.

Here's an old article that states there were zero fatalities reported from 2006 to 2009 in either the LR3 or the RRS (which was essentially the same vehicle).

Range Rover Sport, LR3 Boast Top Vehicle Safety

A new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows Land Rover’s Range Rover Sport and LR3 models to share the lowest rates of driver deaths of all vehicles tested.

www.roverparts.com

I'm not going to dig and find anything more recent, but I remember someone posting here once upon a time to say that there has never been a fatality ever in an LR3 or LR4. If true, that's incredible.

And by me posting this, I'm sure I just Final Destinationed myself.

 

[itsaguything]

…. Or just lessened the cost of insurance and improved the worth of the vehicle, lol.

Announce these facts as a youtube video so it becomes mainstream thinking!

 

[greiswig]

I've been watching Matt since they were Winder Towing and it seems as though they used to do mostly simple recoveries. Over the years I think they've had to up their game in order to gain and keep more subs. Obviously things have gotten more dangerous but he always seems (to the untrained eye) to have things safely under control. This one bothered me a bit because it seems like he broke a few of his own safety rules.

I would guess that most of his income now comes from YT, and I can't imagine the pressure he is under if he drives from UT to southern CA and discovers an untenable situation. It has to be easy to take unnecessary risks for the sake of the sunk cost fallacy and to make sure you have content for your subscribers.

I do think those are all synthetic cables, which helps. (But the angles across the hawse were pretty severe, making me wonder how often he changes his lines) And I also suspect the camera angles weren't helping tell the complete story, e.g. if the vehicle was at an angle where if anything it would roll the OTHER way, and the spectators were actually farther away than they seemed. But then he had a non-employee steer the vehicle through a pretty dangerous section on iffy suspension, steering, etc. That seemed like another unnecessary risk to me.

But anyway...I kept wondering where the vehicle had rolled FROM. It seemed like it must have gone over several times to cause that much damage, and it seemed to be only 40' or so from the trail they were on...not far enough to cause that much damage. So if they were on a switchback above when it went over, how much farther upslope was that?

 

[Daveykid]

I would guess that most of his income now comes from YT, and I can't imagine the pressure he is under if he drives from UT to southern CA and discovers an untenable situation. It has to be easy to take unnecessary risks for the sake of the sunk cost fallacy and to make sure you have content for your subscribers.

I do think those are all synthetic cables, which helps. (But the angles across the hawse were pretty severe, making me wonder how often he changes his lines) And I also suspect the camera angles weren't helping tell the complete story, e.g. if the vehicle was at an angle where if anything it would roll the OTHER way, and the spectators were actually farther away than they seemed. But then he had a non-employee steer the vehicle through a pretty dangerous section on iffy suspension, steering, etc. That seemed like another unnecessary risk to me.

But anyway...I kept wondering where the vehicle had rolled FROM. It seemed like it must have gone over several times to cause that much damage, and it seemed to be only 40' or so from the trail they were on...not far enough to cause that much damage. So if they were on a switchback above when it went over, how much farther upslope was that?

All good points. Yeah, I was thinking he fell from the same spot Matt found to be really tight for the wrecker, but maybe higher.

 

[Pagoda]

Talk about unpreparedness…

But those recovery guys are awesome!

Those guys are very dodgy and are taking major risks to their personal safety. There's some seriously amatuerish winch work going on there.

Shame about the vehicle, and an interesting tyre mix for offroading!