If you’ve ever driven a car in Italy, you should probably know the local motorways are some of the most crowded in Europe, especially those in the Northern part of the country. It’s not a rare case to see congestion on the road and this is exactly the case with the video above. It shows the traffic slowing down before a full stop, creating a potential road accident situation. But let’s see the facts first.

We know for sure this dashcam footage comes from Italy, though there’s no information in the video description about the exact location. However, we unleashed our deductive powers and discovered this is a section of the Torino-Trieste highway (A4), which passes north of the city of Milan. One of the road signs shows the motorway intersection for the Trezzo sull'Adda is 2.1 miles (3.5 kilometres) away, close to the city of Monza. 

The vehicle with the dashcam travels at a speed of about 80 miles per hour (129 kilometres per hour), which is around the official speed limit on the motorways of 81 mph (130 kph) in Italy. Nothing suggests anything is going to happen as all the vehicles seem to be driving respecting their lanes and the speed restrictions. The situation on the motorway could change in a second, however.

As the vehicle approaches the traffic, it becomes clear that it would have to come to a full stop. The dashcam readings confirm the driver hits the brakes in time, though he decides to take one extra step in order to make their manoeuvre safer. Travelling in the left lane, the driver waits for the van in the left to pass them and quickly moves to the left lane where there’s a little more space for braking. It turns out this is the best possible decision in this situation.

Just a few seconds after the vehicle safely moves to the left lane, the camera captures a van desperately trying to slow down in the right lane but failing. A white Volkswagen Golf manages to avoid the crash, but a silver Dacia Duster doesn’t have that luck and gets hit by a white Ford Transit. We don’t have official confirmation, but it seems that no one was seriously hurt in this crash. The same can’t be said for the Transit and the Duster, though.