You never realize how lucky you are to live somewhere with a lot of modern infrastructure that’s been built or updated to support larger vehicles until you end up somewhere that hasn’t. Just getting a regular F-150 parked in some smaller downtown parking lots near me is a pain—and that’s without a trailer. This Japanese trucker who successfully drove through a tiny older tunnel absolutely shames me on every attempt I’ve made at towing or driving something large, and you’ve got to watch the video to believe it.
What we see here is a narrow older tunnel, built for smaller vehicle traffic than a modern-day semi-truck. It’s located just past a bend in the road, making it all the more difficult to angle in a large truck and trailer without scraping a wall. The truck trying to go through has branding for the Toyota Prius PHV GR Sport, a “sportier” version of the Prius sold in Japan. It’s hard to tell due to the low video quality, but the trailer looks like a car hauler, which would track given that Toyota runs its souped-up Prius PHV GR Sport GT300 in the Super GT series.
I’d put this trucker’s skills on par with those of the pro drivers in Super GT, albeit at a different kind of driving. To fit this large trailer through this tiny tunnel, the truck has to start in the opposite lane of traffic and swing over so sharply that it looks like the truck is going to hit the wall or the tunnel itself as it bends straight through the tunnel opening. It looks nearly as folded up as some of my botched, low-skill attempts at backing up with a U-Haul trailer.
For a second, it looks like the front edge of the trailer is going to get stuck on the divider between the two lanes of the tunnel, but no! It makes it through in one try, gently unfolding into the narrow tunnel.
The internet tends to overuse the word “satisfying,” but this quick video of epic truckin’ skill is genuinely satisfying to watch.
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