The hapless man left his vehicle just for a couple of seconds, to readjust a rear-view mirror, like a responsible driver. It was enough though for the heavy truck to start inching forward, gaining more and more speed.

The crane was captured by CCTV camera rolling out from the side street towards its imminent doom, while the driver is desperately trying to stop it. Luckily no one was hurt, as most of the city was still sleeping when the incident happened around 7am Saturday morning.

Reinforcements had to be called in – in the form of an even heavier crane – to pull it out of the water, which took several hours, providing locals and visitors of St. Petersburg plenty of time to take selfies.

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