WATCH: Motorist Plummets Into Sinkhole After Getting Distracted By Phone

A shocking video of a motorcyclist plunging into a sinkhole in China while he was distracted by his phone has emerged online.

The footage of the incident that happened Aug. 17 in the south-eastern city of Beihai, 500 kilometers west of Hong Kong, has gone viral since it was released by the state broadcaster CCTV and posted on the Facebook page Shanghaiist. On Facebook, the video had over 94,000 views at the time of publishing this article.

The CCTV footage from a nearby building shows a massive sinkhole opening right in the middle of the road. Sometime later, the unsuspecting motorist is seen driving towards the sinkhole without a helmet and looking at his phone, he then falls into the hole along with his motorbike.

According to reports, few motorists stopped their vehicles and hurried over to help the man. However, he managed to climb out of the hole and suffered no serious injuries in the incident. The crater was five meters in breadth, eight meters in length and two meters deep, reported the Mirror.

The road was cordoned off by authorities following the incident into which an investigation was launched. The reason for the sinkhole opening up was not known, said reports.

A sinkhole is essentially any hole in the ground created by erosion and the drainage of water and can occur unexpectedly. Recently in the U.S., a massive sinkhole swallowed up two homes and a boat in Florida and was reported to be growing in size. In another incident in February, a sinkhole opened up in Studio City, California, after a huge storm, causing two cars to fall into the 20-foot crater. Firefighters lowered a 20-foot ladder to an occupant in one of the cars, letting her climb out and taking her to the hospital later. In this case too, the woman was uninjured.

In the motorists' case, even though the sinkhole did open up unexpectedly, the driver of the bike was distracted by his phone and was not paying attention to the road ahead.

Motorists getting into accidents because of driving in a distracted manner is extremely commonplace across the world. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cites three main types of driver distraction.

• Visual: taking eyes off the road;
• Manual: taking hands off the wheel; and
• Cognitive: taking mind off of driving.

The CDC states that texting or looking at your phone while driving is particularly dangerous because it combines all three types of distraction.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in the U.S., there were 442 fatal crashes that included cell phone use as a distraction (14% of all fatal distraction-affected crashes) in 2015.

As per the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 14 states including D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands ban all drivers from using hand-held cell phones while driving and 47 states in the country have banned text messaging for all drivers.