This photo of a tunnel might look normal until people noticed the bizarre detail that scared drivers
A driver in the United States thought he was tripping after he spotted a pit carved right in the middle of a tunnel. Turns out, it was his brain trying to process an optical illusion late at night. The man identified as Jordan Mota was driving in Milwaukee, per TODAY, when he was forced to hit the brakes before entering a tunnel that appeared to be split out by an abyss. He took to Reddit (u/StormShadow250) to share the illusory sight that convinced him that had he driven into the tunnel, he would have crashed into what appeared to be a deep pit flanking a concrete underpass.
Not only did he wait to process the dilemma, but the Reddit user ensured the road was safe by observing a passing car ride into the tunnel. “There are no signs blocking it off, and I thought I was just high,” the driver can be heard saying in the video. Alarmed, the man waited patiently although ranting about the lack of road safety as there were no signs cautioning the drop in the tunnel. “That’s just a pit. They don’t have this s**t blocked off or something?” he continued. Next thing he knew, a car approached the tunnel and presumably had a similar reaction at first glance. The car braked in the middle of the road before slowly moving into the tunnel road.
Initially content, the Reddit user was briefly confused as the car continued to drive into the pit. “Is he gonna f*****g go?” he pondered to himself. As the car drives on, a second vehicle dashes in and drives straight into the tunnel road. The man, who was filming the entire scenario, was soon embarrassed to learn that the “pit” he was losing it on was actually only a puddle of water. “Oh, it’s water! I am high,” the driver quipped, eventually clarifying that he was not high in real but was thrown off by the illusion. Laughing it off, the man finally concluded, “It looks like a pit, doesn’t it? I thought they just carved out a hole. I’m tripping.”
Siding with him, there were several others on the internet who were as flabbergasted as the driver. “Was low key hoping the second car would drive through the left lane and fall off the face of the earth,” wrote a fellow Reddit user (u/thebadyearblimp) while someone else (u/klexobert) explained, “I tried to figure every possible solution for that out in my head. A tunnel, a sinkhole but I never thought about a rain puddle.” Another netizen (u/RCJHGBR9989) added, “Someone was messing with the world settings! Turn illusions up to 500%.” A different person (u/stoutsmegeezax) claimed, “I figured it was water. But driving at night after a long day, that would probably scare the s**t outta me too.”
According to the American Museum of Natural History, optical illusions are basically glitches in brain functioning. As the senses gather information through sight, smell, and taste, they send it to the brain to process to create a perception of the world. However, in case of incomplete information, the brain tries to fill the gaps by creating an image that is not real, thus, resulting in an illusion. An oasis in the middle of a scorching desert is one of the finer examples of an optical illusion.