There’s never a good time or place for your car to have a mechanical failure, but some places are safer than others to address roadside trouble. Of all the emergency scenarios imaginable, however, there are very few where exiting your vehicle and running onto an active highway is necessary. Y’know, if your car is on fire then it’s okay to run away from it, but if it isn’t, chances are you should turn on your hazards and stay put until help arrives. The driver of a 2023 Ford Super Duty featured in this hair-raising video did exactly the opposite of that.
Shared by Tesla Dashcam on YouTube, the 47-second clip captured by a passerby shows a cement truck crashing into the pickup and trailer stopped in the rightmost lane of a suspension bridge. It’s unclear when the video was filmed, but it’s only just surfaced on social media over the weekend. Now, the crash isn’t the reason we’re showing you this video, but the alleged driver of the stopped truck who had to literally run and jump to avoid getting hit by the cement truck and other vehicles.
According to Reddit, the crash reportedly occurred at the Port Mann bridge in Vancouver, Canada. The three-lane bridge has little to no shoulder space on either side of the road, which is certainly one of the factors that led to this horrifying moment. It’s unclear what caused the Super Duty driver to stop with his vehicle and trailer half on the road and half on the shoulder, but some commenters claim that it looks like he may have forgotten to put his dump trailer down.
By the looks of it, the front end of the trailer was indeed sticking up in the air before the crash, so it could be that the mechanism either broke while driving or it was simply a user error. Either way, it would appear that driving in this condition—while not optimal—wouldn’t have caused nearly as much carnage as it did by stopping so precariously. As the commenters point out again, the bottom of the rear end of the trailer likely would’ve scraped the road, but it would’ve survived just fine until the driver could’ve stopped at a safer place at the end of the bridge.
As if that wasn’t enough, dense fog on the bridge made visibility extremely poor, as can be seen in the clip. Of course, video footage can sometimes downplay certain weather conditions, so if the fog looks fairly decent on video, I’d imagine it was much, much worse in person. This, in combination with not expecting a stopped vehicle partially on the road, led to the cement truck plowing into the back of the Super Duty and trailer.
It’s easy to comment on a situation like this when it’s not my butt on the line, as there could be key details missing from the video that perhaps explain why that person reacted the way they did. Either way, I’m truly happy that it seems no one was killed or even seriously injured, especially given that previous crashes on that bridge have led to fatalities.
One thing is clear: you should never park your vehicle on an active roadway, much less exit it unless your life truly depends on it. If at all possible—and even if it involves causing a bit of damage to your vehicle—you should continue until you can stop safely off the road. If that’s impossible, calling 911 and asking for a patrol to help offer some cover while you make repairs is another option.
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