Truck doing donuts on frozen NJ lake falls through ice
Feb 5, 2026
In a dangerous stunt caught on camera, a pickup truck was doing donuts on a frozen lake in Ocean County when it fell through the ice. NBC10 Jersey Shore Bureau reporter Ted Greenberg reports.
1:47
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Unfortunately, for the not-stupid, those prizes spill over.
EXAMPLE: I lived as a late-teen-young-adult, in various shorefront communities on Lake Chautauqua, Chautauqua County, New York. Winters there are HARSH. Cold comes early and hangs around till April. Ice fishing - yeah, with the shanties, and the liquor bottles - was, and probably still is, A Thing.
The county seat used to hold a Winter Carnival every mid-January. The usual drunkenness - let's face it, there's not much else to do when the daily high is 18F. There'd be snow-machine races - ON THE LAKE - and various stunts. Outdoor cooking, just to smite Mudder Nature in the face. And, Tall-Truck stunts.
The lifted bro-dozers, with giant wheels...usually with hundreds of BOLTS drilled into, protrucing from, the tires. Perfect ice-traction wheels. They'd race around the ice surface...
BUT
The ice was sounded, maybe with X-rays. It would be eight or more inches thick. You could put the whole football team, cheerleaders, parents, and their cars, on that ice.
They were very cognizant of the dangers. Every year, some jag-off would drop a snowmobile through the ice. Run too early, or do a Last Run through the rotten late-season ice. To their credit, nobody, in my memory, lost their lives - back then, even drunks knew not to do dam-fool schitt without having help close by.
But then, fast-forward 20 years - to the 1990s - and the Woked-up sheriff put out an ODOR...BANNING cars, trucks, snowmobiles, from the frozen lake surfaces.
Sure. Because it's all about SAFEEEE....TEEE....
And those who had money and equipped trucks or snowmobiles...would go elsewhere, or stay at home. Not renting motel rooms, or drinking at taverns afterwards, or planning events...all the touristy things.
While Sheriff Gerace was doing this idiocy, the landmark independent hotels were going out of business.
I'm more a believer in Darwinism. If someone is so stupid as to not sound the ice before driving out there, he deserves to die.
And a fifty-year culture of winter-carnival events need not be sacrificed because no safety-cost is too high, as the Safety-Officer Karens will tell you.