Dangerous Drives Review

Dangerous Drives - Storm Chasers. Speed Channel

Dangerous Drives featured three chasers: Jim Reed, Mike Phelps and Simon Brewer. The show followed Jim and Mike around as a pair in Jim's Ford Explorer and then Simon going solo in his Chevy Cobalt. Looks like they were out for 3 - 4 days last season possibly during the May ridge since there were no tornadoes actually filmed during the show. The show suffered from the usual add of stock footage and out of sequence shots.

I enjoyed seeing Jim's infamous foot race to the landspout video in western KS from 2008. They had some harrowing close calls with lightning strikes that was also pretty dramatic.

I was a little disappointed that the Explorer and the Cobalt were featured as being these customized vehicles for storm chasing. There's nothing there except for Jim's button starter under that dash that almost every chaser out there doesn't already have.

There were some interesting camera angles on the show but they were easy to tell how they were done as no effort was made to take the rig off the cars on the other shots.

The show wraps up with Jim getting stuck in the mud and the tractor being used to pull him out also getting stuck - a scene that we can all sympathize with!

I mostly enjoyed Dangerous Drives as an SDS diversion but the bar has been raised and the audience expects real tornado action and intercepts now.