20 Things You Didn't Know About Speed
8. The I-105 Jump Was Just As Difficult To Pull Off As You'd Think
Speed's most iconic, and physically impossible, moment is the famous bus jump over a large section of missing freeway. The idea for the speeding bus to leap over a missing portion of freeway came to De Bont when he noticed big sections of road missing. He told Yost to write in the scene, and the logistics of filming it were fairly nightmarish.
The first bus (one of 11 half or full constructed for the film) missed the ramp and crashed. Two days later, they tried again with some adjustments and multiple camera angles, however the bus sailed through the air much farther than expected, destroying one of the main cameras. Luckily, another camera 90 feet away captured it perfectly.
Much of the gap is ultimately computer-generated, including a flying bird in the background to give some perspective. A 2009 episode of Mythbusters thoroughly proved that the jump, as portrayed on the screen, would have been impossible.