Engineering Student Wins Guinness World Record for Most Consecutive Times Crossing the Street Without Checking for Oncoming Traffic

When Engineering student Mitchell Zhao, Class of 2018, left his dorm this chilly morning in a thin cotton t-shirt, sweatpants, and a pair of flip flops, a Guinness World Record was the last thing on his mind. He was preoccupied: he had a CIS assignment due, among other things, and had only consumed three Red Bulls since he woke up. Mitchell didn't pay any mind to traffic as he crossed 34th Street without looking to either side.

As always, Mitchell made it across the street just fine despite numerous honks and a near-miss with a small van. A break from his normal day-to-day, though, was the man in the suit who shook his hand when he stepped onto the curb. Mitchell was joining the ranks of stars like Silvio Sabba, who clipped 51 clothes pegs to his face in one minute; and Gerhard Donie, who struck 15 human targets with plungers in one minute. Mitchell was receiving a Guinness World Record: he'd just blindly walked across a busy street, with no concern for his physical safety, for the 147th time in a row.

"I didn't realize I'd crossed the street so many times without looking," Mitchell told us. "I guess I just kind of assumed I wouldn't get hit by a car because I have so much work to do, so I never let the cars bother me."

Mitchell's friends confirmed his skill at obliviously crossing the street despite speeding cars and yelling bicyclists. "I don't think it's that he doesn't care, he just really doesn't think about it," one friend told us, on the condition of anonymity. "I've been walking with him and I'll stop on the edge of the curb, to wait for a safe time to cross, and he'll just keep walking. It's like he has a sixth sense, or he's just really dumb."

Sources at the Guinness World Records organization informed us that Mitchell was also in the running for "most consecutive days in winter wearing a t shirt, without any warmer layers on top of it, without shivering or complaining about the cold" but he was disqualified when his torso became accidentally entangled in a trash bag outside Huntsman on a windy day last week. Officials, citing the "trash bag poncho" popular at sports games, insisted that the trash bag counted as a layer.