A man in a stricken vehicle cheated death recently, as the dashcam footage from a Tesla vehicle that was shared with us by a reader, Don, shows. The man was standing outside of his apparently broken-down truck on a foggy bridge when an approaching cement mixer truck jumped on the brakes, giving him just enough time to run away from the accident.
According to a Reddit post sharing the video of the event, the incident took place on the Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In the moments leading up to the accident, the footage shows that the man’s pickup truck was stopped in the rightmost lane, and its tilting trailer was in the up position, suggesting that it had suffered a breakdown of some description.
Unfortunately, the malfunction could not have come at a worse time. Stuck on a roughly 1.2-mile-long (2 km) bridge, in the fog, with very little shoulder to get out of the way of approaching vehicles on, an incident such as this one was almost inevitable.
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Due to the fog, a cement mixer truck traveling in the right-hand lane didn’t notice the stricken vehicle until it was too late. Dashcam footage shows that the brake lights only illuminate a few car-lengths away from the pickup.
Therefore, the truck’s driver takes the split-second decision to do a moose-test maneuver. Impressively, it manages to mostly avoid the stopped vehicle, and only sideswipes the trailer.
What would have been an unbelievably good decision in any other situation was complicated in this case by the fact that the pickup’s driver was outside of the vehicle. Fortunately, the man’s athleticism allowed him to run out of the way of the cement truck that had turned toward him.
Miraculously, the man escaped unscathed. We do not know the condition of the cement truck’s driver, but the damage appears to have ultimately been minimized under the circumstances, thanks to both people’s incredible luck and quick reflexes.
Just the latest reminder that you never know what’s coming down the road, this incident is a fine example of why paying attention at the wheel is so vitally important.
