Is it really illegal to save a rolled-over Jeep?

so we just figured what the heck five of us in a tow strap we can get that out of there i go so we just hooked the toaster up and yanked it out and he goes no way and i go yeah go look i've got five brothers and a bunch of friends and for a period of about 10 or 15 years my brothers and i and our friends would go mountain biking the upper peninsula of michigan near a town called copper harbor out in the middle of nowhere there's logging roads out there copper harbor's a neat little town but but right outside of town is there's just logging roads and forests and you go mountain biking for days you know and just you know have a blast and literally go for hours and not see a vehicle out in these logging roads we're on mountain bikes and we're you know grown men but we're goofing off just out in the woods you can scream and you don't have all the fun you want so we're out riding along one day and it's about noon and it's a weekday and we come around to curve and we see a jeep down in a ditch now the road is here it's a logging road and there's a ditch right here and the jeep is down in a ditch nose down in the ditch and we all stop we're looking around and we've been on this road recently and we didn't think we would miss the jeep so the jeep we think got deposited recently and we look and we realize that you can see skid marks and there's a small tree that got knocked over and there's a windshield laying over here which is apparently from the jeep and as we piece this together because you know it's got nothing better to do somebody was coming around this curve on a dirt road really really late at night in a jeep lost control ran over the little tree and this thing rolled at least once ejected the windshield and then wound up in a ditch so the first thing we just we're looking for bodies were you know we're looking around to see if whoever was in the jeep got injured and we're looking around there's nothing there's no blood or anything what happened here and we're like five miles outside of town this is just you know out of nowhere and so we're we're looking at this jeep in the ditch and we've decided that the guy who was in the jeep must have gotten out and walked back into town but we're sitting scratching our heads and i've got an older brother who's an engineer who actually owned a jeep and he had an old jeep that had all kinds of work done on it and he's looking at this jeep and he goes you know i could have gotten this out of here and we're like what are you talking about and he goes well look you can see there was there was the guy been spinning his tires trying to back the jeep out of there and we go okay and he goes the front hubs are unlocked the guy didn't lock his front hubs and we're looking at this and i'm going but you understand that that jeep is more vertical than his horizontal that that jeep is not coming out of there under its own power my brother goes no it would it would because if you knew what you're doing you could get that jeep out of there and we just start ripping on right dude there's no way you're out of your mind now he's the oldest brother of all of us so you know he he's had this good natured ribbing his entire life but he was insistent he goes if i had the keys i could get that out of there another member of our group goes keys you don't need keys for a jeep that's got the ignition in the dashboard and uh really and there's also a tow strap in the back of the jeep it was laying on the floor of the jeep so this is five guys on mountain bikes a jeep in the ditch and a tow strap and a member of the party says hang on a second and climbs into the now remember he's like this because the dashboard is down here and he's playing with it and he goes um hang on a second and all of a sudden the jeep is turning over it's cranking but it won't start and we're all kind of like how did you get that to happen but my other brother goes i wonder if the guy before he left the jeep disabled it so that somebody couldn't come by and hotwire it so we pop the hood and sure enough the coil's been disconnected reconnect the coil try it now boom fires right up so my brother goes lock up the front hubs locked up the hub locked up the hub my other brother who thinks he's better with clutches pushes the guy out of the driver's seat because let me drive so remember he's sitting in a wheel like this facing down we hook the toe strap up to the back and all of us are pulling on the toe strap and my brother's driving and he hasn't reversed he has all four wheels spinning and pops it out pulls it out on the road parks it and like wow hey ken you were right and i'm watching this and by the way i've got photographs to prove this so i wouldn't expect you to believe without photographs we're all kind of like wow what do we do now and i go well we should just pull it to the side of the road just park it and leave it the guy's trying to come back to see if someone can help get it out it's out now right so we put everything back exactly as we found it even unlocking the front hubs and we even go so far as to reconnect or disconnect the coil like that and we get back on our bikes and we ride back into town copper harbor is a really small town there's one main street a couple other buildings this way but we're eating lunch at a place called the mariner north and it's one of the two or three big establishments in town that hires local people and we're sitting at the big table all of us you know big dining room table eating waitress comes by and i look at her and i go i got a question for you i go there's a turquoise jeep i've seen around town she goes why do you ask about that i go well do you know who owns it she goes yeah i go and she goes my brother and i go really and she goes do you know where it is and i go maybe why she goes he came home last night but he didn't have the jeep and i go i wonder why she goes i don't know do you and i depends i go where is he right now and she goes well he works at the store at the other end of town about a hundred yards down and i go really i go you know he works next year he's working there right now so we all finished our food we walk over there and we're like what do we tell this guy you know and i go think of it this way he probably couldn't gotten it out by himself right we got it out of the ditch for him that's got to be something he should be thankful for right and we're having this heated debate because some people are arguing that we shouldn't tell them anything some people are like like we should make up an ex i got no no we walk and i go excuse me i go are you the guy with the turquoise jeep he goes yeah i go did you um stick in a ditch last night and he looks at me and he goes why did you see it i go yeah i go we were just riding by and we saw it down in the ditch like we stopped because we wanna make sure you weren't hurt because we saw the windshield was out because yeah you know i rolled it and went to the ditch and i go we saw the toe strap in the back so we just figured what the heck five of us in a tow strap we can get that out of there i go so we just hooked the toe strap and yanked it out and he goes no way and i go yeah go look [Laughter] he's looking he goes are you serious i go yeah and he goes so right now it's out i go yeah i go i go we pulled it out pushed it over the side of the road and we left it exactly as you put in the ditch it's there right now and he goes i had just been calling around to people who had tow trucks the nearest town is calumet which is about a half hour away he goes some of the quotes i was getting were insane for them to send a tow truck up because you just saved me a bunch of money and i go dude you're welcome i go we were happy to do it he goes and you did that with a tow strap and i go yeah yeah we did so here's the thing it's been over 10 years i don't think any laws are broken but you know the question is whether or not it's it's unethical to not give a completely historically accurate account of what happened but i like to think in the grand scheme of things everyone had their heart in the right place and at the end of the day he got off better right he was lucky to walk away from that accident so the one thing i never asked him was whether or not alcohol was involved because this is so far out in the middle of nowhere on a logging trail i don't even know the police patrol that or not but the guy had actually rolled the jeep gotten out of it pulled the coil wire off and then walked several miles back into town so you know he had a really bad night i figured at the very least we saved a couple hundred bucks [Music] you

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 318,031

Rating: 4.9291701 out of 5

Keywords: Steve Lehto, Lehtos Law, Lehto, Lawyer, vinwiki, car stories, save, rescue, mission, help, jeep, wrangler, car story, brotherhood, brothers

Id: YQMARa2bN9c

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021