Motorists encounter unexpected things on the highway so they should always be alerted to avoid mishaps.

When cars were braking on the southbound lane of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) near the Pulilan exit in Bulacan on the night of 21 January, Noel Luartes slowed down his car.

There was no crash incident ahead, fortunately, but two coffins on the pavement provided eerie sights for motorists.

A van carrying the empty caskets from Pampanga to Marikina accidentally dropped them on the highway, causing a traffic slowdown.

The van operator waited for NLEX assistance to safely remove the blockade. He also settled with another motorist whose car was slightly damaged by the falling coffins.

Meanwhile, a 74-year-old truck driver figured in a road mishap in Yashio City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan on 28 January.

As of this writing, rescuers are still trying to recover the man who was trapped in the driver’s seat of the truck that fell on one of two sinkholes that appeared on the road.

Unstable ground is hampering the rescue and communication with the driver was lost the next day, after new cave-ins caused the 5-meter-wide and 20-meter-deep sinkholes to combine into one bigger pit and sunk the truck deeper in debris, according to reports by Japanese media.

A burst underground sewer pipe was suspected of causing the collapse of the portion of the road, so wastewater flowing from the damaged pipe was discharged into the nearby Niigata River starting late Wednesday to reduce the water flowing into the sinkhole, Japan Today reports.

WJG @tribunephl_wjg