Darwin award winners 2009

The fabled Darwin award winners for 2009 have been announced. The prize is awarded annually to "doing the most to improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it".

In third place was the first ever woman to be nominated for the award. Rosanne Tippett drove her moped into a flooded river, despite the warning signs. She was rescued by police, but died after jumping back into the river in an attempt to recover the two-wheeler.

In second place was Shawn Motero who was stuck in a traffic crawl in Florida when he needed to answer a call of nature. With no toilet handy, he got out of the car before jumping over a concrete wall to find a more secluded spot. Unfortunately, the 30-year-old had not realised he was on a bridge, and fell 65 feet to his death. According to his mother "Shawn didn't do a whole lot for a living. He got along on his charm, just like his father". Award organisers said it proved you should "look before you leak".

But the winners of the 2009 Darwin Awards were an industrious pair of Belgian bank robbers who blew themselves up while trying to crack open a cash machine. The men used so much explosive to get their hands on the money that they destroyed not only the ATM but the whole bank building. When police arrived at the scene, they found one of them with severe head injuries, and rushed him to hospital where he died shortly after arrival.Investigators initially assumed that his accomplice had managed a getaway, but the second one's body was excavated from the debris twelve hours later. Belated congratulations to both of them.