Video of MD ladder truck going through intersection goes viral for a really stupid reason

The video above, posted to YouTube by thejellydonut, has been viewed more than a half-million times since Friday. There are many more views from other versions on YouTube and Facebook. The reason it has become so popular is that quite a few news and other websites, including 9News in Australia and break.com, have decided that the sideways movement of the rig through the intersection constitutes drifting.

Of course, what most of the sites fail to explain is that there is someone in the back of the TDA turning a steering wheel clockwise that is making the rig move laterally. In the comments section on many of these sites there are a number of firefighter types trying to explain the concept of someone tillering the rig.

9News in Australia helped propel MD ladder truck to viral fame

The rig in question is Montgomery County (MD) Fire & Rescue Service Truck 734. The ladder truck is seen responding southbound on Route 355 through the Middlebrook Road intersection.

This video has actually been on YouTube with little notice (only 6300 views) since May 25, 2014 (see below). That’s when it was posted by Saulius Mrozinskas. At that time, the only comments were a discussion about the red traffic signal. It appears that someone copied a portion of the video, added the drifting description and suddenly it’s this month’s most famous fire truck.

But at least someone who saw this clip actually understood what was going on and mated it with video of probably the most famous tillerman ever, Cosmo Kramer. That clip is posted on the MemeCenter site. Don’t you just love our digital world?