If you’ve ever driven on a large motorway, you’ll have no doubt seen runaway truck ramps in the past. While truckers would prefer not to use them, they can nevertheless prove to be life-savers.
Earlier this year, a video of a truck using a runaway ramp in California was posted online. It has recently started gaining attention over at Reddit and it shows just how important these ramps are.
The clip was filmed near the small town of Grapevine and shows a large semi-truck driving down a steep hill. Based on the smoke spewing out from the truck, it seems likely that its brakes overheated, hence why the driver quickly swerved into the right-most lane of the highway before proceeding into the runaway truck ramp.
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Thanks to the gravel that most runaway truck ramps like these use, the semi was brought to a halt in just a few hundred feet. The entire incident was filmed from the dashcam of a fellow trucker.
Apart from that incident, we’ve also added a second video which is even more dramatic. This clip was filmed in Silverthorne, Colorado back in April 2019 and shows a truck also using a runaway ramp. In this instance, the truck appears to be traveling extremely fast and, despite how steep the runaway ramp is, it only just stops in time before hitting the top.