A poor decision by someone driving a tiny car nearly cost them and a passenger their lives in what looks to be Russia last year when this video was taken. What you are about to see is a combination of factors working together to prevent a tragedy that may have killed someone and scarred someone else for life. When you see the reaction of the trucker when he gets out of the rig you’ll understand just how distraught he was and that’s likely because he thought he was about to mash a couple people in a clown car to death and it wasn’t even his fault.
The camera angle for this video comes from an on-coming traveler who was stopped to take a left when the scene unfolded in front of him. The truck, presumably loaded and traveling up hill approaches the intersection where the film car was stopped and all of a sudden a vehicle pulls into the frame form the left. The truck driver reacts instantly, landing on the brakes and the huge rig shudders to a stop either not touching or barely grazing the little car. Three things prevents this from being a completely different scene. One was physics. The truck was going uphill and that really helped to aid the stopping distance. The second thing is maintenance. If the brakes had been out of adjustment on this truck he would have plowed into that car without any hope of stopping. The third thing is an alert driver who saw something happening and reacted as quickly as possible.
It literally seems to bend the laws of physics when this truck stops. The body is shaking and rumbling and the ABS was working hard but it all functioned together. All those axles and all those tires also must have helped in the contact patch department. There are close calls and then there’s whatever this was….we don’t even have a name for it.
I like the old school Dale Jr. “8” on the truck!