Video: this terrifying footage of a Chinese traffic jam haunts our dreams

There are traffic jams - where the Highways Agency closes three lanes of a busy motorway to scoop up a hapless driver’s dismembered wing mirror - and then there are traffic jams. This is the latter.  

China’s G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway ground to a halt this week after thousands of drivers tried to return to Beijing on the second-to-last day of the week-long National Day holiday.

The jam, on one of China’s busiest roads, was supposedly caused by a new checkpoint on the far side of a set of toll booths, forcing some 50 (!) lanes of traffic into fewer than 20.

China has form when it comes to ridiculous traffic jams. A 60-mile tailback in 2010 stranded drivers for 10 days. And we thought Britain had it bad…