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Darwin Award Tunnel, Russia

Posted on: December 18, 2008 9:58 PM, by Greg Laden

Actually, it's Lefortovo Tunnel, Russia.

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

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Comments

Lefortovo - the tunnel of death!

Posted by: Coturnix | December 18, 2008 10:15 PM

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

Posted by: Stephanie Z | December 18, 2008 10:42 PM

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

Posted by: tincture | December 18, 2008 10:43 PM

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).

Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | December 18, 2008 11:45 PM

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.

Posted by: Beowulff | December 19, 2008 6:12 AM

@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.

Posted by: Doug Alder | December 19, 2008 9:38 AM

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.

Posted by: Dread Polack | December 19, 2008 10:10 AM

@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.

Posted by: Benjamin Franz | December 19, 2008 12:34 PM

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

Posted by: Anne Gilbert | December 19, 2008 7:39 PM