RocketNews24

Paying toll sure is a pain.

Back in the good old days, you could just ram through the barrier if you didn’t want to pay; now, thanks to security cameras, doing that will leave you with a ticket and a damaged frame.

Yet while the days of speeding through  toll booths to stick it to the man may be over, the following footage from a Chinese traffic camera shows that you can still get out of paying toll by scaring the sh** out of the man.

The above video was uploaded on January 17 to Sina Video, a video-sharing site run by poplar Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo, and has reached over 3 million views and nearly 30 thousand comments since.

The video begins by showing an empty car roll up to a toll both late at night. Upon noticing the empty passenger seat, the puzzled toll collector steps out of his booth to inspect the vehicle. Just then, a woman with her hair thrown over her face slowly climbs up onto the roof of the car from behind.

The scene is eerily reminiscent of Sadako‘s iconic entrance in The Ring, and the toll collector seems to think so as well as he gets the hell out of there as fast as he can.

After making sure the coat is clear, the woman slips down from the top of the car, checks to see if the coast is clear, raises the barrier, and drives away.

Clever, huh?

Well, as some of you may have begun to suspect, that’s not all there is to the story.

Near the end of the video, after the woman has raised the gate but before getting in her car, you can see her holding a small device which she uses to steer the car forward remotely.

This explains how she pulled the no driver stunt at the beginning of the video, but it seems a little odd that she would take the time to move the car forward via remote control when its only a foot or so away. And the toll collector could come back at any moment — shouldn’t she be in more of a hurry?

Chinese netizens believe this video is actually a viral marketing ploy by Chinese automaker BYD, which in August 2012 unveiled its latest mid-size sedan equipped with “Remote Driving Control Technology”, the Su Rui.

With a simple handheld device, the Su Rui can be started, stopped, and driven in any direction, though the speed is limited to just 2 km/h while doing do.

But why? Sure the concept sounds cool, but when has anyone who is not James Bond ever actually needed to control their car remotely?

BYD suggests using the system to park your car in tight spaces that you would otherwise be unable to open the door and get out of once parked. And that’s really about it; there isn’t much else you can suggest to sell people on this gimmick…unless you use a clever viral video.

So all signs seem to point to BYD, especially when you consider that the Su Rui is the only car on the market with this technology on-board. And it’s obvious the woman in the video isn’t a secret agent — if she were, she would have used far cooler moves to get past that toll gate.

Source: Sina Video, Gizmag, BYD

▼ BYD Su Rui demonstration video