If you're a longtime Giz reader, you may remember that on last New Years Eve, Rhys Millen was supposed to perform a backflip in a truck on live TV. One problem: he broke a bunch of his vertebrae during a practice run and had to cancel. Well, he's gonna give it another go this year, and to get you all amped up for it, Red Bull has released the video of his crash. Want to see a dude do half a backflip in a pickup truck? Follow me, ye of strong stomachs.

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Let's be clear here, guys: jumping out of an aeroplane on a four-wheeler is a bad idea. You will break both the four-wheeler and yourself. That doesn't make watching dudes drive out of the back of an aeroplane on dirt bikes and four-wheelers any less awesome, however.

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French performance art troupe "Not So Noisy" have spent the last month "assembling" giant, life-sized Autobots from normal cars, and shooting the action from overhead. Of course, they're not really building anything. They're really arranging cars (or people) in an empty parking lot so that it looks like Optimus Prime knocked back a few too many quarts of oil and passed out. But it's awesome.

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Samsung released a video in which members of their staff threw an SSD off a three story building and then plugged it into a laptop, where it was operational. Though the computer screen at the end of the video gets washed out, you barely makeout the Windows XP desktop. Naysayers and skeptics should also note that once the SSD was thrown off the building, the video was never cut. Not too shabby. [Samsung SSD]

In-car movie cameras are ridiculously complicated. Gone are the days where Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman gab while an unconvincing film loop plays behind them—now people at the wheel are really hurtling down a highway with bonus hardware all around. The Dukes of Hazzard vehicle above is one of the craziest examples, because it was built to stay on the road while the cab jacked back and forth to simulate those good ole' car stunts. Below is another one, apparently from the thriller Deja Vu. Our friends at Oobject have a lot more, 12 total. Go vote for your favourite. [Oobject]

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Michel Fournier is about to make the greatest leap of his, and anyone else's, life. On Sunday, the 64-year-old retired French army officer will fly almost 40 kms into the sky in a giant balloon, step out of a pressurised capsule and plunge headfirst towards the earth, soaring through the atmosphere for an estimated 15 minutes.

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Noted crazy person Travis Pastrana gets bored easily, and he entertains himself by doing ridiculous, usually-dangerous things at high speeds. His latest stunt? The hydrojump. It involved him "skimming his Suzuki dirtbike at 110 kms per hour for 33 metres in five-foot-deep water, and then launching off of a floating FMX ramp." It actually looks pretty fun in the video.

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Captain Ian Wilkinson got fired after doing a crazy 518kph flyby at 8.5 metres over the 2.5km runway at Paine Field, a regional airport located next to Boeing's Everett facilities, the manufacturing site of the new 777-300 he was flying to Hong Kong, and the 787 Dreamliner. Reportedly, first he was congratulated upon arrival (as shown in the picture,) but when the video of his stunt hit the web, he was fired:

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While recently a daredevil was forced to cancel a backflip in a truck because he broke his back doing some practice runs, this daredevil already has a broken back. Aaron Fotheringham was born partially paralysed from the waist down. I guess he figured risking being fully paralysed from the waist down wasn't all that big a deal, because he started doing tricks in his wheelchair, leading up to this insane full-on backflip. Sure makes guys that use broken backs as an excuse for getting out of stunts seem less ballsy, no? [Spulch]

Bad news: Rhys Millen, the crazyperson who's been prepping to do a backflip in a truck on New Years Eve all week, had a little accident. OK, so not that little of an accident, but that's not going to keep him down!

After successfully landing the 360-degree backflip three times into the cardboard boxes in training, I am disappointed that our last jump ended in an accident. As I lay here in the hospital with three broken vertebrae in my neck and two compressed and broken vertebrae in my back, I am also disappointed that we cannot perform the 360-degree Red Bull Experiment on New Years Eve, but I'm happy that I will be able to walk again.

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