If you've ever driven down a residential New York City street, you know they're almost impossibly narrow.
Many are one-way, alley-width and have cars parked along the sides. The end result means there's space for about one car.
Kind of.
That's why there are limits as to what can drive where. Plenty of companies who handle things like furniture and appliance deliveries as well as repairs or installations flat out tell their customers that they can't drive or park on certain streets—or they will ask for permits after notifying the buildings, etc.
It's not the easy "pull into your driveway and do the job" sort of deal that it is in the suburbs. Not even close.
But what happens if a driver doesn't know that?
Well ... this, honestly.
You're about to watch two and a half minutes of utter vehicular carnage.
Brace yourselves.
Some way, some how, the driver of this truck truly believed they were going to be able to maneuver it through the narrow roads and sharp corners.
Spoiler alert for those who didn't watch the video—it's a catastrophic failure. The truck ends up stuck between a brick wall and a blue hatchback—and causes thousands of dollars of damage attempting to wriggle its way out.
Windows are shattered, vehicle panels are gouged to bits, mirrors get torn off—even a fire hydrant gets taken out in the slow-mo-madness!
No, it doesn't shoot water into the air like in the movies—but we'll talk more on that later.
To make it all worse (better?) the driver manages to draw a pretty decently sized crowd of hecklers and/or helpers. Unfortunately for the driver, at least one of them was armed with a phone and posted the video online.
The response was ... um ... colorful. To say the least.
Some felt bad for the driver.
"Obviously not the best trucker in the world, but I do feel kinda bad for the guy. I've driven horses all over the east coast, never anything as big as this rig but I've driven some pretty big ones and my biggest fear was something like this happening. Mistakes happen, you can always miss your turn and in a big rig you can't just easily swing around." - racing_in_the_street
"As a truck driver myself, my heart sank when I saw how bad of a situation it was. But I'm not gonna defend what he was doing to try to get out of there. That truck was so clearly stuck and not gonna move without outside help. He was being an idiot."
"The right thing to do would have been to immediately stop moving when he hit the car the first time, and call the cops. Sit tight in the cab if people come over to give you shit. Mistakes happen."
"I just want to make myself clear. What the driver did from the start was not ok. Whether he made an honest mistake or not by going down that road, he likely got his a$ handed to him by the cops for it, and rightly so. Nevermind the damage to the car and hydrant (and whatever else)."
"I don't have enough info to truly pass judgement and I'm not familiar with NYC traffic laws at all. I'm saying that if you lose focus for just a second it can be easy to take a wrong turn, and all of a sudden you're on a road where you literally can't even turn around."
"This is hard to watch. I imagine being the driver and all I'd want to do is wake up from that nightmare." - valuedminority
"I worked for a company that used to send us into Brooklyn and Queens with 53s. I always got my boss to text me that he wanted me to go down there so my butt was covered. After a while, he didn't send me down there anymore." - blackjak66
"I'd be having a total breakdown by this point. Run away or just go completely blank and unresponsive. The amount of compounding stress factors here, with everyone involved hostile towards you and no back up at all to help you through it? You do not want a person in that state to even attempt to fix the situation, things will definitely get worse." - legatus_maximinius
Others were more interested in talking about carnage and joking about the situation in general.
"Some say he's still there to this day. The truck is now a tourist attraction. Traffic has been permanently diverted. All proceeds go to the blue car." - philbagg
"I want this guy doing commentary on all nfl games that I watch. 'Umm..umm..ummmm... he ain't done yet, he's gotta f*ck more stuff up!' A++++ 5 stars. Will watch again." - rebootitagain
There was the "RIP to the car" crowd.
"Dang, that was a nice matrix. was. This is nightmare material." - deadmallsanita
"That Toyota got hit so hard it became a Subaru by the end of it." - VLHACS
"Oooh shit! Thats a TRD Matrix XRS! Thats not an easy car to replace. I would be so fking pissed." - katlunazul
"I just realized what if the truck dragged the car there." - driftmiata
"I mean, as the video starts the blue Toyota has a puncture wound in it, and the cammer says 'here we go again" before the truck hits and drags it seemingly for the second (or more) time, so I think it's safe to assume that what we see is not the blue Toyota's initial starting position." - studiorion
And finally, because we said we would talk about it, we end with a quick lesson on why the fire hydrant didn't explode on impact.
(We know explosions are what the people really care about.)
Giphy
"Worst part of this video is no water shooting up into the air like in cartoons after driving over that street water thingie." - Ithinkimwitty
"NYC operates on a system that utilizes 'dry' hydrants. Meaning there is a valve and stem deeper in the ground that they twist from the top of the hydrant to open it. This way if a hydrant is hit, it will just sheer off like documented above." - Taco-Task-Force
"Clearly NYC hates fun." - Echindaismywaifu
"Dry hydrants are used across the US anywhere that the temperature goes below freezing. If they used wet hydrants they would all be useless in the winter because they would all be frozen solid." - Corrupt_id
"Winter hates fun." - goldiegoldthorpe
If you also came for the crash, Mythbusters produced many over the years. Mythbusters: Buster's Biggest Crashes is available here.
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Listen to the first four episodes of George Takei's podcast, 'Oh Myyy Pod!' where we explore the racially charged videos that have taken the internet by storm.
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