Few things are as annoying as being stuck behind a truck on a highway – with no way around. Germans have a unique word for one such phenomena.
The German word Elefantenrennen translates to “elephant racing”. But this strange German word has little to do with elephants.
“Elephant racing” occurs when one truck tries to overtake another truck on the highway with minimum speed difference. This results in a blockage of lanes – making it challenging (or sometimes impossible) to pass the large vehicles.
Like elephants, trucks can be massively sized, take up a lot of space and keep you stuck behind them.
An Elefantenrennen can cause slow-downs and traffic jams when there are many vehicles on the roads. In fact, Elefantenrennen is even illegal in Germany (that is: trucks overtaking trucks at “low speeds” is illegal). That doesn’t stop it from happening every once in a while.
If you’re stuck behind two racing elephants, the best thing you can do is slow down and hope the race ends quickly.
