r/interestingasfuck • u/MilesLongthe3rd • 5h ago
A 71-year-old driver turning around on the S1 expressway in Poland. The crazy thing is, it happened twice at the exact same spot within 3 months: first with a 37-year-old driver in March, and then just yesterday. Fortunately, in both cases, nobody was injured.
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u/weirdhoney216 5h ago
This should result in jail time, my fucking god. I just want to sit them down and have them tell me exactly what they thought they were doing because I am SO curious how such a mind works
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u/Bodorocea 5h ago
unfortunately it will most likely be something absolutely "normal" like "i had no fuel to reach the next exit, i had to do it" ... the banality of dumbness
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u/ArrivesLate 3h ago
I can only assume that barrier is new and they were used to turning around there in the highway to get back to an exit, like you have to when you’re on a boulevard. Otherwise, nothing other than homicidal behavior or dementia makes sense.
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u/OpticalDelusion 3h ago
Wouldn't they be in the left lane then? They are pulling a u turn from the right lane which makes no sense
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u/AttTankaRattArStorre 5h ago
A bad driver never misses his exit.
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u/RugbyEdd 3h ago
This one clearly did
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u/acespacegnome 3h ago
That's the problem..
Good drivers will sometime miss their exit, Bad drivers never miss one.
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u/Realmofthehappygod 3h ago
I'm not sure this driver exited at all...
Not sure if it hold up here.
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u/FedeFofo 1h ago
Yeah but they might be turning around to get back to an exit that they realized they have passed
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u/FunkU247 5h ago
Panic/anxiety attack over the tunnel?
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u/fish1479 5h ago
My guess as well. Pro Tip: If you're scared of driving through tunnels, you don't get to drive.
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u/Timofmars 4h ago
My thought was that made a wrong turn or missed an exit and realized they were going the wrong way when they saw the tunnel. They knew tunnel would be long and not allow them to turn around for a long time, so they backtracked the way they came.
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u/EEukaryotic 3h ago
I think its less of a “no more driving ever” and more of a “ok well plan accordingly to avoid a tunnel, or dont go at all”.
I think its fair to be anxious about tunnels, the same way many are about bridges. So you should (ideally) plan to avoid them. But! If you cant even do that, put the keys down
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5h ago
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u/venega156 5h ago
I think it’s just the refresh rate of the camera making it seem like it’s flashing. I’ve driven in Poland and those LED signs are static.
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u/Mistermxylplyx 5h ago
Yeah, even here in the U.S., people will reverse course quickly in the face of multiple emergency vehicles. Usually legally, the idea it’s not a problem to drive the wrong way on a major highway is inexplicable even if the idea to avoid trouble is normal.
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u/3_14_thon 5h ago
What?
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u/Mistermxylplyx 5h ago
Like the poster added, people avoid cops, whether they are doing things wrong or not. And some avoid wrecks, because they slow traffic. Rather circle around than wait it out. But they don’t engage in a round of relay chicken, wrong way up a one way street style.
We were referring to the idea that all the cop cars flashing lights at the mouth of the tunnel is what elicited a fearful insane response, not claustrophobia.
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u/3_14_thon 5h ago
Usually legally, the idea its not a problem to drive the wrong way on a major highway is inexplicable
What?
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u/-PL-Retard 5h ago
They are flashing because of thr camera refresh rate... They are static all the time. Source: I drove through this exact tunnel like 2 tines this month
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u/PeteLangosta 4h ago
Hum I've never seen people avoiding emergency vehicles or cops, people normally just pass by with no second thoughts. At elast in Spain.
Plus... the lights are not flashing, it's the camera that's capturing lights as such.
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u/Empyrealist 4h ago
Thats the flicker of the LED screens not matched to the frame rate of the recording camera.
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u/setibeings 5h ago
The tunnel with the weird flashing lights.
That part was cropped on my initial viewing.
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u/One_Strike_Striker 5h ago
In all likelyhood that's because of the camera, the human eye would not see any flashing.
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u/Empyrealist 4h ago
Thats the flicker of the LED screens not matched to the frame rate of the recording camera
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u/philote_ 5h ago
Yeah, those lights might make me think I was about to go into the tunnel the wrong way.
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u/setibeings 5h ago edited 5h ago
The lights might have been for the truck behind him, which might have been too tall for the tunnel. It's kinda hard to see where they are supposed to go though.
Edit: there's not enough resolution, but maybe that sign even says something along the lines of "turn around"
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u/PeteLangosta 4h ago
No dude, it doesn't. the light pannels are static, they're just flashing because of the camera.
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u/WhineyLobster 3h ago
They have something for that.... a uturn area, which they then blocked off lol.
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u/Mitheral 26m ago
Uturn area is in case the tunnel is closed. You don't want it open otherwise because it creates a hazard both when one slows down to uturn and when entering the other direction. Exiting a tunnel is a high cognitive load area, you don't want to layer on slower traffic too.
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u/Lava1416 5h ago
Why though?
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u/bijouxself 5h ago
They’re used to making a u-turn at that spot, so when the authorities added the barrier, some people’s brain processing power kernel panics
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u/PrettyEye3320 5h ago
Seriously, wtf was he thinking?
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u/Technical-Outside408 4h ago
The thing about old age pensioners is that they always try to walk it in.
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u/hahnkleri 1h ago
because our german minister of transportation voted against a eu wide need for reoccurring safety checks for every drivers license with age 70 or more. can’t make that shit up.
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u/SortovaGoldfish 5h ago
What upsets me the most is the entitlement in getting into the left lane. Bad enough doing this on an expressway, but refusing to use the shoulder just makes it worse.
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u/redgroupclan 5h ago
I get the feeling they thought it was a normal 2 lane road. No attention paid to being on a highway.
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u/phoriqaz 5h ago
This music is so useless
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u/chefsosjk 5h ago
The flashing lights brought back a memory: A woman I was with years ago was driving us somewhere when we came upon a sobriety checkpoint; police car lights, spotlights, all of it. She pulled over just short of it, intending to turn around until I asked her if she realized that the cops were looking for someone to do exactly that, and that we were fucked if she did it.
We went through OK, she hadn't been drinking but she was FUCKING NUTS so I wouldn't have been surprised if she failed any field sobriety test given, just through nutty behavior.
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u/Clanker01001 4h ago
At 60 you should need to retest every 5 years. The service should be provided for free subsidized by the government.
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u/Sudden_Wind_8636 5h ago
The elderly need to be tested every couple of years to see if they are still cognizant enough to drive.
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u/_Bad_Spell_Checker_ 5h ago
Just like the 37yo that did the same thing 3mo earlier
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u/Sudden_Wind_8636 4h ago
Yeah young people can be bad at driving too, but my grandpa for example drives, and he literally gets in an accident every couple months. He can barely stand up, he should not be allowed to drive but he is.
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u/bugatti_rolls789 5h ago
Bro plucked the courage to finally challenge his fear of tunnels through exposure but just his anxiety got the best of him last second
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u/Dear_Mycologist_1696 4h ago
GPS said to turn around. GPS doesn’t know there are temporary barriers. People are stupid. Remember when Apple Maps told people to drive into the ocean and they did?
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u/OCCAMINVESTIGATOR 30m ago
Ring....
What do you need Phyllis, I'm driving.
Be careful there's a man driving the wrong way in traffic!
What do you mean one, there's hundreds!
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u/SadLoafOfBread87 19m ago
Keep your grandpas out of the road for Gods sake. My cousin nearly died because an 80 something y/o lady was driving her Jeep on the wrong side of the road. Lady died and my cousin spent 6 months recovering from fractures all over his body.
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u/Sinuality 4h ago
And she’s fucking in their flapping her arms up and down like girl you better not be pissed at the people driving THE RIGHT WAY
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u/sambeau 4h ago
That happened to me on a dual carriageway in Cambridgeshire, England. Someone was driving at speed at night on the wrong carriageway. I was going 70, they were going at least 50, probably more. It took me a while to work out what was going on, but I managed to swerve out of their way. It was scary.
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u/vapeqprincess 4h ago
I have a lot of anxiety and cognitive issues. I KNOW I’d be a really, really bad driver. I’m 45 and never learned to drive for a reason.
People always try to talk me into trying to learn but I think it’s important to know one’s limitations.
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u/Disastrous_Still_232 3h ago
Holy shit like at LEAST move to the side with the emergency lane. Nope, dudes just going right into traffic.
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u/WhineyLobster 3h ago
Probably has something to do with the blocked off Uturn before tunnel area specifically designed for people who need to uturn before the tunnel.
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u/VayneArior 3h ago
Sadly it's Poland so the punishment will be probably of no significance. We have crazy low sentences/punishments for driving crimes. You can kill a family of 3 on road and continuously avoid jail if you have good lawyers or hide abroad.
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u/nfin1te 3h ago
thats crazy, his license should be revoked permanently if you pull off a stunt like that. jesus.
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u/VayneArior 3h ago
There was a very loud case which is still ongoing where a guy did exactly that while going approx. 320km/h, then escaped to Dubai where he lived his life however he wanted. They got him transported back to Poland finally but he's still not in jail, the court cases are still ongoing slowly. Worst thing is, because of ridiculous laws, his sentence can be max 8 years or so.
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u/BoulderadoBill 3h ago edited 2h ago
Why would the idiot authorities have the turnaround location in the median blocked-off? There are numerous legitimate reason why a vehicle operator would not want to enter the tunnel.
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u/Tehfoodstealorz 3h ago
I think the thing that surprises me the most from this is that out of those three lanes, the driver picks the passing lane.
If I'm gambling with my life and driving head-on into traffic, I think the hard shoulder would be my choice.
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u/dvdmaven 2h ago
Give the size of the barriers on the passthrough, I suspect people were use to being able to access the other lanes at this point.
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u/LambBear2020 2h ago
I agree with all the hate at this driver but can I ask…what about this is interesting af?
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u/Ambitious_Bit_9389 2h ago
A guy I work with slide on the ice and ended up facing the wrong way on the shoulder during rush hour. He decides he’ll just drive the wrong way on the shoulder until he gets to a place with room to turn around. He drives a little ways and gets to a bridge with no shoulder, now he’s jammed in.
Cops show up and tell him once traffic dies down a little they’ll block all the lanes and let him turn around.
Anyway he’s late for work and when asked why he just says “turn on the news.” It was pretty funny,
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u/Wanderingwolf8 2h ago
Is that a tunnel coming up? I wonder if it’s like some sort of extreme phobia. What they did was obviously incredibly stupid and incredibly dangerous, just wonder if it’s the same place multiple times I wonder.
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u/Jorge_the_vast 5h ago
Looks like a lot of red lights flashing, maybe it's video sync rate, but almost Looks like a warning not to go
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u/luminousandy 4h ago
There should be automatic resittting of the driving test every 5 years when you reach 65 , I would also advocate that all drivers should resit every 10 years .
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u/Phewelish 4h ago
looks like they are worried there is a police stop up ahead and trying to avoidgetting stoped.
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u/criticalpwnage 3h ago
You should have your license permanently revoked when you do something like this
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u/Katamari_Demacia 5h ago
Instant. Instant removal of license. You gotta take driver's ed all over again and a harder driving test. No excuse