Most of us are aware that Super Bowl commercials are expensive, with millions spent on the airtime alone. The sad part is that Jeep has had to pull its Super Bowl 75th Anniversary 4x4 ad from syndication, but the company probably should have checked with Utah and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management before it showed an image of a pendulum jump from Corona Arch.
According to KPVI, Jeep officials have recently pulled one of their ads which showed someone swinging from a rope swing at the Corona Arch. The ad is one that was shown at the Super Bowl, and it displays many people doing athletic things with a Jeep vehicle in the background. The issue is that Jeep was essentially promoting an activity which is illegal.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management instituted a two-year ban on rope activities at the Cornona Arch in May. Officials are attempting to make this ban of swinging from Corona Arch permanent.
It is possible that the commercial was filmed before this ban took place, and there are many YouTube videos showing people swinging from this massive natural formation. One that is titled "World's Largest Rope Swing" was posted on February 15, 2012, and it has received over 26 million views.
On March 26, 2013, 22-year old Utah man Kyle Lee Stocking of West Jordan was killed in an attempt to swing through the opening of the 110-foot-tall sandstone arch. The problem was that he left too much slack on the rope he was using, and crashed on the sandstone base. At the time, CBS News did not report how Stocking or the friends that he was with miscalculated the length of the rope.
The Corona Arch is located near Moab, Utah, in a side canyon of the Colorado River. It can be accessed by a 1.5 mile hiking trail from Utah State Route 279. Moab is the site of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, but the Corona Arch is not within those boundaries of either of these two parks. Arches National Park is the home of Delicate Arch, a formation that can be seen on many license plates in Utah.
As someone who has visited Arches national park in 2013, I observed that the many people did do some things that I definitely found dangerous. For example, I saw one man walking atop one of the arches, and there was a drop of at least a few hundred feet on one side. Although I didn't see any base jumping or "pendulum" swinging, but it is pretty obvious that these stunts are dangerous, and there will be accidents resulting from them.
So, Jeep probably should have checked before airing the ad. Jeep has an event known as Jeep Safari, which is going on from March 19-27 in 2016. This event encourages visitors to get in a Jeep and ride on some trails in Moab, and celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
