Well, as is well known, teenagers aren't usually the smartest of all people and tend to sometimes have certain activities that would make a cat flap in an elefant house look wise, and these 15-17 year old teens sure are an example of this.

After having had a nice night in town, 4 youngsters decided to head back home to Lausanne, a town situated nearly at the other end of the Geneva Lake, and thus of Geneva. And well, instead of waiting a little more than half an hour for a train, they decided that going by boat would probably be a better idea: a small "pedal boat" would have to do the trick, probably thinking that what the train could do in 20 minutes, a couple of strong youngsters could certainly do in the same amount of time.

And so, as the air temperature fell beyond freezing point and the water was no more than 10 Degrees Celsius warm they snatched a small four person boat and started to pedal. Even though they probably realised that such boats can't sink, they might not have realized that during winter times the cork is removed from the boat, so that when the water freezes it won't cause cracks. And so, after 400 meters down the lake, and another 50 km or so to go, the realized that the boat was filling up with water. Panic ripped through the cold night and instead of pedaling back they decided to swim back, which turned out to be more than 2 of these young chaps could handle. Only two out of the four teenagers were able to quickly reach the lake side, cold, freezing but probably devoid of anymore late night lake adventure. The other two didn't have the time to let the situation "sink" in, and did indeed just that!

Submitted on 11/15/2007

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: Le Temps, Monday 12th of November 2007

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

Bruce said:
Maybe Toss: Other
Thanks for a great writeup to an original story. Unfortunately it sounds like some of the victims are below the age of the maturity cutoff of 16, so I'm inclined to toss this. Let's see what the other moderators have to say.

Chip said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
We have already accepted this story (see "Pedalo" - http://www.darwinawards.com/slush/new/pending20071112-010855.html) so I am voting to let Darwin see this much better writeup.

James said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
We did accept this story a couple of weeks ago, and I do believe the actual victims were 16 or older. I concur with Chip in that this is a superlative write-up which merits Darwin's consideration!