I love cars, and my eyes stay glued to screens for about 14 hours of the day. That means the algorithm loves to feed me car-based videos. Because of that, I watch dozens of dashcam clips—where a camera is mounted to the inside of a windshield, usually pointed outward—every single day.
As such, I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous videos. Car crashes, amazing saves, weird moments—type any of these phrases into YouTube with the words “dashcam compilation” attached, and you’ll be given endless hours of content to comb through. This video from the built-in camera of a Tesla easily takes the cake for the craziest dashcam footage I’ve seen all year.
The video, published to TikTok yesterday by user mtopchian1, starts innocently enough. It shows the camera traveling northbound on S Sooner Road, on the southeastern outskirts of Oklahoma City. Then, right as the car reaches a cross street of SE 119th Street, a single-engine aircraft appears from the left, no more than 10 feet off the ground. The plane crosses onto the roadway, angled towards the camera car, where it appears to touch down as the car swerves to avoid striking the right wing tip, seemingly by inches.
@mtopchian1 That plane looks a bit low to me #plane #crash #planecrash #nationalguard #okc ♬ Sybau – KCK Mixes
The plane in question is an OA-1K Skyradier II, a light attack aircraft put into service by the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command earlier this year. The plane took off from Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma, where it and the crew were based, before the incident occurred.
Photos published to social media suggest the plane left the roadway shortly after that dashcam video was filmed, and struck powerlines before coming to a rest in a nearby field. The plane looked surprisingly intact, considering where it ended up.
An Oklahoma National Guard plane has crashed in a field near S.E. 119th and Sooner Road. No word yet on how many people were on board, and if there were any injuries. Police say Tinker Air Force Base personnel are at the scene. The plane appears to be single-engine. @NEWS9 pic.twitter.com/o7GZCPdg5U
— Matt McCabe (@MattLMcCabe) October 23, 2025
In a statement published to X, the Oklahoma National Guard said the plane’s two occupants, a civilian contractor and an active-duty U.S. Air Force service member, were not injured in the crash. The Guard says the plane was conducting a training mission at the time of the incident, and that a cause for the crash is under investigation. The most obvious possible cause is engine failure, which would’ve forced the pilot to make an unscheduled landing—that’s just speculation at this point, however.
If you, like me, are thinking the Skyraider II doesn’t exactly look like your average military aircraft, you’d be right. The plane is actually based on the appropriately named Air Tractor AT-802, an aircraft introduced in 1990 and originally designed for crop-dusting. The Skyraider version is built in conjunction with military defense contractor L3Harris, and is meant for “low-intensity missions, such as counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations,” according to The War Zone.
Oh boy! Latest reports were that everyone is ok! ???? pic.twitter.com/NwI4X2yXen
— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) October 23, 2025
Though there’s no telling how or why the Skyraider II managed to hold up so well in the crash, The War Zone speculates its blue-collar origins might’ve had something to do with it:
It’s quite possible the aircraft’s crop-duster roots helped keep the airframe and its crew intact when it came down in the field, as it’s built to operate from rough fields even in its suped-up military configuration.
Take this incident as a lesson to always keep one eye in the sky. You never know when a military-grade aircraft is going to cut you off because they didn’t look both ways.
Top graphic images: public domain; Yonvim via Amazon
This is definitely a code brown. If you want a similar and safer experience try driving down the road next to Palm Beach International Airport all the landing planes are very low over the road. First time I was in the experience it scared the fick out of me. And these are 747s and the like.
Danger Will Rog….er…Robinson!
A cropduster hit a semi trailer here a few years ago. There was a field next to an orchard and the trees hid the truck until it and the air plane were at the same place at the same time. The plane could fly under the power lines and over the cars, but not quite over semi trailers.
Growing up in rural northern Colorado in a major agriculture area, you get surprisingly used to duster planes flying shockingly low across the roads around here. Not uncommon for these planes to zoom across county roads under the lines maybe 12-15 feet above the ground.
We actually just lost our long time local crop duster pilot, a fella named Rick Scott, to an overconfidence accident back in March. He’d been flying for 39 years, only had one engine failure incident, but he got overconfident and the utility company had recently moved a couple poles when rebuilding an interstate overpass and he wasn’t used to the spacing, clipped one of them and his duster spun out and went nosedown into a corn field and that was lights out, good night Gracie.
This was nearly a catastrophic incident for this dash cam driver though. Definitely would have gone full Code Brown on my pantaloons if this happened to me. I might not have reacted appropriately because I’m so used to low flying dusters that the ‘oh shit it’s landing ON THE ROAD’ might not have hit me until I was getting Jayne Mansfield’ed.
I have to think cropdusting is one of the most dangerous jobs in aviation. Even if you are 99.999% proficient, coming up against such small safety margins dozens or hundreds of times a day, it’s just a matter of time.
is meant for “low-intensity missions, such as counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations,”
These will be strafing protestors in the US by this time next year.
Balloons with a length of chain or wire cable, or just balloons with the rumor of chain or cable would discourage that.
Perhaps dropping portajohns on blue states. (insert eye roll here)
The thing about these planes is that they’re pretty cheap, so they’re not widely used by the US military. That because Boeing/Lockheed/etc. would much rather that the USAF bought another F-35/F-22/B-21 instead, and they have the
bribeslobbying to make that policy stick. Can’t have the US military using equipment that doesn’t make profit.“That’s just speculation at this point, however.”
Soooooooo…
Quite a “North by Northwest” moment. Hitchcock might approve.
That single prop blade being bent sure does seem to indicate loss of power.
Yup – looks like the prop was feathered and not spinning when they hit the ground.
Any landing you can limp away from is a good one!
We should have put these or something similar into service 20 years ago instead of wearing out hundreds of billions of dollars of jets to drop bombs on people without an air force in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These can take off from a dirt strip, loiter over the combat zone for hour, and drop the same precision weapons. Simple and cheap to operate and maintain. It is telling that we bought the Iraq and Afghan air forces prop planes like these.
But then the defence contractors wouldn’t rake in billions of taxpayer dollars.
The ‘War on Terror’ was actually ‘The Grift on Terror’ and was designed SOLELY to enrich the military industrial complex. We could have amazing infrastructure and Medicare for All and major upgraded interstate and high speed rail systems by now, but noooooo we just HAD to line the pockets of the military industrial complex and put ourselves trillions in debt in the name of enriching a few thousand people.
They need to get the ol’ neck choppy when we actually get around to a full scale revolution.
2001 Terrorists – Actual Terrorists
2008 Terrorists – Entrapped by Homeland Security
2025 Terrorists – Neighbors I Disagree With
Yeah tell it to the innocent people at the music festival who were attacked murdered and raped.
Yes too bad post WWII decided to rebuild Europe and become their defense while they basically defeated their army and navy and air force. Good that we decided to back off most of that. Did you know that the US wasn’t even in Europe?
Not likely to have the range or capacity for the bombs and probably a bit more fragile under anti aircraft fire.
Nope. Light-attack aircraft are perfect for the role. They can drop modern precision guided bombs and missiles. The problem is the same as proven aircraft like the A-10. The Air Force wanted to spend all their money on the F-22 and F-35.
So they did, burned up a bunch of 4th gen fighters and spend a massive amount of money on fuel and maintenance and today taxpayers are paying the price again as the Air Force and Navy buy new 4th gen fighters to replace the ones used up dropping bombs on people with nothing more powerful than a RPG.
Like Congress refusing to allow the Air Force to retire the A-10 without a replacement they have also been pushing the Air Force to buy and field light attack prop planes to use in theatres where the enemy has not air force or anti-aircraft capability. Special operations have embraced them but the Air Force has not.
I’m surprised by the lack of Dusty Crophopper commentary…
Air tractors sometimes plow fields. Somethings not right about an aircraft that routinely goes under power lines but those guys do. I know some chair force and a few navy pilots that think the crop dusters are crazy marine aviation probably just thinks it normal in the field and all.
I knew a crop duster. Crazy described him well. He built a Bonanza in his back yard from multiple crashed planes and took it for a test flight on I 25. He was passing cars on it. And not from above. He later became an airline pilot flying 727s and said he wanted to put on a parachute and walk to the back of the plane shaking passengers’ hands.
The older ones Ive met in the past seemed crazy from the get go. I talked to a young one at an airport diner they were operating out of a few years ago. He seemed rather normal maybe even uptight enough to fly something bigger but when he left one of the guys in there said “boy ain’t right” I watched him take off and fly a bit he definitely flew like he had a death wish.
Sounds about right. I’ve seen cropdusters dusting at dusk with gigantic floodlights mounted to the wings. No way you can see something in time to dodge in my opinion
It’s basically just them and bush pilots that are expected to crash during their careers now. I don’t know how they avoid poles and power lines when they are flying at dusk at night sometimes they don’t I guess.
Our hometown crop duster retired about 10 years ago, after a nearly 50 year career. He crashed 2 planes in his career, both open cockpit biplanes. The third biplane ended up in the hometown air museum. No one can figure out how he lived to retirement.
They fly with spotters on the ground, often in a pickup that they fly over at the end of the field.
Problem is that the pilots can’t see what is directly in front of them at ground level, which is kind of a big deal when you are flying at 20 feet off the ground.
Some pilots started using two spotters after two dusters had a head on collision pulling up over a hedgerow separating two fields. Their spotters were a mile or so apart and were completely unaware of each other.
One of the spotters was the pilot’s daughter, and the ag flying community is pretty small so it was pretty traumatic all around.
I tried looking it up but there are so many that it’s kind of hard to find.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Tracy+California+cropduster+collision
They crash alot. Some of the newer glass cockpits have cameras in different places. Like very front looking down from the engine cowling and wings. I have a feeling drones will take over almost completely soon.
They like to fly as dusk and at dawn because that’s when the air is the moving the least because of the lack of heat convection.
Also some of the materials are degraded by sunlight.
Gotcha. Still seems even more risky
Growing up in Kansas, the local cropduster would swing by his house for lunch. He would land on the county road in front of his house and pull in his driveway. I always wondered why his front gate was so wide. The sheriff would get pissed about it, but wouldn’t do anything because the local farmers depended on the pilot.
That particular pilot would also buzz the golf course if he saw anyone teeing up. Damn. Im just going down memory lane today
This sounds very central or western Kansas to me. I’m certain he wouldn’t have gotten away with it east of I-135, but out west of Wichita/Hutch/Salina, pretty much anything goes.
Southwest Kansas for the golf buzzer. The bonanza car buzzer was from denver
Duster pilot here once pointed out a feature to cut power and phone lines if he hit them.
Wow! I just finished doing the graphics for the instructor operator station for our simulators! Even though it’s an OA-1K, the pedals still say Air Tractor.
Too close for missiles… switching to guns.
Or superior pilot skills, like Randy Quaid in Independence Day
“Break out the pooper scooper!”
I mean I’ve nearly been aerial topdressed myself. Those cropduster pilots do not have issues flying low across a highway. I can’t imagine how much more terrifying the same plane would be coming straight at you armed with laser guided weaponry under the wings…
I imagine that the air force reserves will take advantage of this fact and recruit crop dusters as reserve skyraider pilots. Heck, I know a few farm boys that would have joined up to fly a Skyraider just to be a crop duster after discharge
Well, it worked OK for the Rebel Alliance…
It will be interesting to read the NTSB report. If there will be one. Military crashes often end up classified.
Turboprops are generally pretty reliable. But of course, I’m happy that everyone walked away.
agree as to turboprops reliability (and glad everyone is safe!) – engine failure seems one of the less likely causes to me – approx. 13 miles from takeoff is odd
There won’t be an NTSB report. The military does their own investigations and only sometimes releases them.
Sort of like that friendly fire shrapnel that hit the VP’s motorcade the other week. We only know it happened at all because a CHP cruiser got hit and the State of California isn’t playing ball with the administration’s messaging.
Cockpit looks intact, I would bet minor injuries at most. Even the civilian version of the AT-802 is rugged and overbuilt as hell, they are intended to be about as crash-safe as an airplane can be as crop dusters crash quite a lot (5-point harnesses and air bags). The Skyraider package adds some ballistic armoring and self-sealing fuel tanks. My guess would be it required a pants change, but probably not much else.
I imagine the pilot was more worried about colliding with a car than the landing in a field
I woulda crop dusted my pants.
That footage is just plane wild!