Some people just have really screwed senses of humor. When I was part owner of a parking/shuttle system in a gaming town we had a driver take a bus load of seniors down a mountain path that was a one lane dirt road (usual route down but one you have to be careful on). She started to go a little too fast and then screamed "Hold on, my brakes aren't working". Keep in mind, the passengers were old people coming to gamble, and it was in high altitude where they weren't breathing normal in the first place.

We almost got sued. Needless to say, she was unemployed after that shift was over. It took about 20 minutes after the first bus stop for the complaints to start coming in. Even when confronted, the driver couldn't see that what she did wasn't hilarious.

The driver (and company) were lucky no one had a heart attack. There is a certain dark humor to such pranks, but it's surprising that people nowadays aren't aware enough to realize there are going to be consequences -losing your job, getting sued or even getting arrested.

The snake would have died before the car stopped.

My first reaction is to say that people are over-reacting.

But I grew-up dealing with a lot of snakes, and I recently read
an article that said anthropologists and neuroscientists
believe that the fear of snakes may have developed early
in primates and is hard-coded into the medulla oblongata?

Couldn't find the article that I read but here is another:

Snakes on the brain: Are primates hard-wired to see snakes? :: UC Davis News & Information

I don't have a snake phobia. I once had a pet snake and I've even held large snakes I knew were tame. But I'm not a snake expert either, and some are deadly. And some people are nuts, so if someone sticks a bright colored snake in my face, it would probably make me nervous.

So the fear would not be a reaction to the fact that there is
suddenly a snake, but rather the (much slower) realization that
there is a suddenly a snake, and some snakes are dangerous?

As an ex cab driver, I can say that the best was when Chris Rock had his show on HBO and would pretend to be a cab driver and do things to get his passengers' reactions.

In one show, he pulled out a bong and asked his passengers if they had a light. In another, he pretends to drink booze from a bottle in a brown paper bag. In another he handed his passengers a rat trap and asked them to set in under the seat because there was a rat in the cab. The look on the women's faces was priceless.

I wish I could have done some of that stuff when I drove...

Here's a real story another cab driver told me...he was driving down the highway and fell asleep at the wheel. The passenger started screaming and woke him up. He regained control of the cab and the passenger started chewing him out.

He told her, "Hey Lady, quit complaining. I just saved your life!".

LOLZ how he will F*** the snank? I am thinking anyways this was toooo scary.