Road Hazard

So at lunch I was going around an intersection corner in my Miata, maybe at 25 mph, a very wide intersection with two turning lanes so not really that fast for it, in good conditions it was easily a 60 mph corner, and suddenly slid sideways about a foot and caught it.  Like a Juan Fangio 4 wheel drift in slow motion.    Whoops! What happened?

On the way back I  looked at the corner closely.  Right at the apex somebody had dropped a bunch of  concrete colored pea gravel.  

I can imagine how bad that it would have been for a motorcycle rider.

As it was it could have caused a spinout for me, a crash into the curb, and probably a ruined chassis. 

Be careful out there...

Gravel on asphalt is possibly the slipperiest surface out there. You're basically dealing with ball bearings. That was a real problem in the Targa Newfoundland, especially since they run the cars in increasing level of speed - the fastest cars are most likely to come across gravel on the road.

Glad you made it through and that it's not motorcycle season!

I was thinking oil spill. Pea gravel just might be worse. Yikes!

I have pulled up to a red light hard in the brakes and hit a deep well socket laying in the road. It kicked in the ABS so hard I almost ended up in the intersection. I identified it before I hit it and didn't think anything of it until the front tire hit it. 

I was taking the fun cloverleaf exit off Circle Drive one evening when I discovered the street sweepers had watered the exit ramp...  Steer like a madman!

You haven't road hazard' till you mow down a king sized mattress. 

Appleseed said:

You haven't road hazard' till you mow down a king sized mattress. 

I’m gonna need to hear more about this story

I ran over a deer once.  I was following a box truck.    Don't know if hit or some one in front hit the deer first.   Any way,saw it too late.   I straddled it.

No damage to my car, just some hair and blood on suspension parts.

I had a weird one once. I was driving my old Mazda 626 through Sacramento, on an elevated freeway that was about 6 lanes wide at that point. I was doing about 70 when a large tire and wheel shot across my lane, bounced off the wall to my left, and rolled directly in front of me. I expected a pretty hard hit and some damage. I did not expect the car to ride up on the tire and the resulting air time. The landing did a lot more damage than the tire did. I can still remember what the guy in the car behind me said when he pulled over- "Dude, are you okay!?! I could see completely under your car!"

The wheel ended up being from a hearse. The driver had been driving with loose/missing lug nuts and the studs sheared. Multiple cars were damaged. 

iceracer said:

I ran over a deer once.  I was following a box truck.    Don't know if hit or some one in front hit the deer first.   Any way,saw it too late.   I straddled it.

No damage to my car, just some hair and blood on suspension parts.

I got a coon the other day. It was already dead in the road. The G35 is pretty low, and the cross member at the rear suspension is surprisingly sharp on the leading edge. It worked like a scythe. Right above that cross member is the exhaust. I smelled burned coon and hair for the next 10 miles. It was not pleasant. Pretty much took care of my appetite for the rest of the day. 

I hit a berkeleying Christmas tree on the 101 freeway.

Appleseed said:

You haven't road hazard' till you mow down a king sized mattress. 

This is the best single line I've read all week. Thank you.

Daylan C said:

Appleseed said:

You haven't road hazard' till you mow down a king sized mattress. 

This is the best single line I've read all week. Thank you.

You are lucky if you drive over it, I have heard of them getting stuck under the car and burning, and I once saw pics of one wrapped around the driveshaft on a pickup.

Picture the Semi truck scene from Metalica's Enter Sandman, with more dumptruck and less Hetfield "Yeah-ee-yeah-ah!

Lots of "Aw berkeley E36 M3 " instead.

Back in 2000 I ran over an extension ladder lengthwise on the drivers side on the freeway at about 70 mph in a 99 civic.  I was fortunate that it went under my tires instead of in the middle of the car. I never checked for damage but the car ran fine until I traded it off the next year. 

One of the most dangerous things on the highway is a loose wheel from a semi. One crossed to the other side of the NJ turnpike when I lived there, killed all five occupants in a Mercedes.

I was in heavy traffic on a 4 lane fwy when the hood of a car prolly 6-8 in front of me sailed up in the air like a frisbee and headed right for my nose. All I could do was watch. Decided that the best option was run right up the tailpipe of the car in front of me, who either wasn't paying attention or came to the same decision. It landed maybe 20 ft behind me and the next car took it from the ground. 

I'd rather deal with the mattress.

This is post whoring par extraordinaire. 

A friend of mine back in 03 came around a corner and hit a giant old TV in his Taurus sho. I was behind him and almost rear ended him.

My old XJ had a sizable dent in the rocker panel on the driver side from catching the tread from a semi tire at 75mph.

Worst things I've run over are a coconut and an almost-coconut-sized rock, both in the AE92.

(Note for anyone who thinks a coconut is a brown round fuzzy thing a little bigger than a baseball: That's just the core of a coconut which contains all the goodies. A full coconut is more like an acorn scaled up to be 7~11" around).

The coconut bounced off the underside of the Corolla like a giant wooden ping-pong ball but luckily didn't damage anything. Luckily the car was at full factory ride height back then. When I ran over the rock the car was lowered and had a subframe brace on, which was tweaked a little further.

I've run *into* some worse things in the Samurai that caused more damage, like a truck bogie hidden in a bush, a concrete block the size of a large microwave hidden on the edge of a jungle trail, and an inattentive woman's CRV in a blind intersection, but that's not running *over* something.

Appleseed said:

You haven't road hazard' till you mow down a king sized mattress. 

That happened to my chiropractor on the way home from the dealer with his brand new accord last year 

I was in my track rat Miata with maybe 3in ground clearance at the front splitter towing my tire trailer to Grattan.  It was dark out and I saw what I thought was a tar patch on the ground...until it launched the car about a foot in the air.  It was some kind of road kill. Luckily no damage.  However for the last hour and a half of the trip smelled like a bad BBQ since part of it landed on top of my muffler.  I was picking entrails off of the trailer axle too.  Luckily it rained for the first part of the track day and washed the underside clean.  

Floating Doc said:

One of the most dangerous things on the highway is a loose wheel from a semi. One crossed to the other side of the NJ turnpike when I lived there, killed all five occupants in a Mercedes.

I saw this in person, almost 20 years ago, though fortunately no-one died.  Watching two semi tires flying through the air and bouncing down the road was one serious oh-E36 M3 moment.  Did $8k damage to a vehicle parked on the shoulder.  I have one of the broken wheel studs to this day, lugnut still in place.  I keep it on my desk to tell the story to new employees to emphasize how important it is to keep your eyes on traffic when working roadside.

Funniest one that happened to me was back in the 80s... I was behind an appliance delivery truck (stakebed - no tailgate) in the middle lane when a refrigerator box fell off the back.  There were cars on both sides, and behind, me... nowhere to go, but I was in a '74 LTD so I figured it would be ugly, but not life threatening.  It all happened in slow motion... then the box hit my bumper.  It was empty!!  It flew what looked like 50ft straight up, and came down right on the hood of a Honda a few cars back.  I'm pretty sure the resulting carnage ended up blocking all three lanes...