One can hardly imagine a more nightmarish waking up: A man had gone to sleep in the hold of his van. Then the vehicle rolls off and lands in a stream. The man cannot free himself – and is only rescued after a nerve-wracking night.

A transporter rolled into a stream in Karlsruhe, along with the sleeping driver. The man was trapped in the vehicle’s hold for more than five hours on Monday night, according to the fire brigade and police. But he was incredibly lucky again: the next morning, the emergency services freed him unharmed from the car, which had only partially sunk.

The man had parked the van in a parking lot in the evening and probably forgot to put on the handbrake. He went to sleep on a bed in the hold. In the middle of the night, the man noticed the van slowly rolling into the creek.

Since the water was up to the sliding door, he could not free himself. His cries for help went unheard for hours. It was not until the next morning that a walker noticed this and got help. The transporter was taken out of the water with a truck-mounted crane.

(This article was first published on Monday, November 07, 2022.)