The Bit at The Start.

here we go.

On the main island of Japan, Honshu, there are two major highways connecting east and west, the Tomei and Chuo Expressways. Along these two highways Japan's lifeblood flows in the form of an almost ceaseless, unbroken stream of cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles. For most of its approximately 400km length the Chuo highway is a four-lane highway with two lanes in either direction, sometimes separated only by a guardrail, sometimes a completely different structure with some distance between opposing directions. In its middle section it snakes through the mountainous prefecture of Nagano, home of the 1998 Winter Olympics and in the southern part of Nagano there is a tunnel. A very long tunnel. It is 8.8km long, making it one of the longest road tunnels in the world, and is known as the Misaka Tunnel. Some other basic statistics about this incredibly long tunnel are as follows. Each direction is 4.4m high, 9m wide at its narrowest point, with various bays and wide areas to allow for breakdowns, as well as a labyrinth of support and access tunnels for maintenance, lighting and ventilation. At its deepest point, the Misaka tunnel is 440m from the surface of the ground.

At the time of writing there have been no major accidents in this or any other tunnel on the Chuo highway, but if one were to occur, the following could be what would transpire.