Darwin Award Tunnel, Russia

Posted by Greg Laden on December 18, 2008
(9)
More »

Actually, it’s Lefortovo Tunnel, Russia.

Don’t go to Russia. And if you do, stay out of the tunnel.

Keywords:
(9)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 Coturnix
    December 18, 2008

    Lefortovo – the tunnel of death!

  2. #2 Stephanie Z
    December 18, 2008

    I love how everyone else manages to stop in time. It’s almost like they expect these things to happen.

  3. #3 tincture
    December 18, 2008

    Wow. Wtf is the deal @59? The truck suddenly hit another truck that appears to materialize out of the wall?

  4. #4 Romeo Vitelli
    December 18, 2008

    According to Wikipedia, the tunnel leaks and ice forms which makes the driving hazardous. It kind of makes you wonder why they don’t lower the speed limit in there if the road is so treacherous (those cars were going pretty fast).

  5. #5 Beowulff
    December 19, 2008

    It kind of makes you wonder why they don’t lower the speed limit in there if the road is so treacherous (those cars were going pretty fast).

    … or they did and just about everybody is simply ignoring the speed limit.

  6. #6 Doug Alder
    December 19, 2008

    @tincture

    Ya I saw that too and played it over and over and over again and still can’t figure out where that other truck came from.

  7. #7 Dread Polack
    December 19, 2008

    It looks like there might be an opening; a service tunnel perhaps. Maybe the truck was poking its nose out, or creeping forward to turn into the tunnel, and got pulled out by the other truck.

    But, that sounds like a pretty dangerous setup, so doesn’t make a lot of sense either.

  8. #8 Benjamin Franz
    December 19, 2008

    @tincture: It looks to me like an accident was already in progress when the trucks entered the camera’s view. You don’t see the second truck because it is just obscured by the first one initially. If you pause the image just before the second truck appears you can see the first one is clearly swerving around already. The car just ahead of both of them is also swerving as it enters the image.

  9. #9 Anne Gilbert
    December 19, 2008

    Apropos of absolutely nothing, I noticed that Russian has apparently adopted the word “tunnel” from English. And the tunnel is named after some guy called Lefort, an immigrant to Russia in the time of Peter the Great, who started a lot of these trends.

    The other thing I noticed is, apparently the Russians built that lefortovo tunnel with fairly typical slapdashness, if it leaks and ices over. People used to complain about this sort of thing under both tsars and commissars. Interesting to see it aprently still continues.

    And finally, is this Lefortovo tunnel in St. Petersburg, by any chance?
    Anne G