maddox

When I was young and silly we moved flats for the usual reasons - anyway we didn't have a tie down for the mattress so I got my mate to lie accross the top - Hew ended up sailing into the grass verge and had a nice soft landing. It was bloody funny at the time but could easily have been worse.

We can do that sort of stuff over here - down south there are only about 5 cars on the whole island - just kidding - it seems like there are only about 5 cars !

Perx

I'll chime in here, as I'M AN OFFENDER!

I just went on a weekend vacation to Palm Springs. On the back of my wife's SUV, I put our bicycles on our bike rack -- one I've used many times before. I didn't put the load as far forward as I usually did, and I didn't use two straps instead of one like I usually did (damn thing's designed for one, right...). Anyway, 40 mins into the trip, I'm doing 75 in the fast lane and I see one of the bikes fall off in the rearview! Luckily there is a full paved shoulder inside the fastlane and cars in the fastlane are able to circumvent the fallen bicycle. I pull over as quickly as I can (to the right shoulder, what an idiot) and I run a quarter mile back to where the bike is. Luckily still no one's collided with the bike. I wait for a break in the traffic (approx 20 mins) and run across 4 lanes of traffic to get the bike out of the lane. Then I wait on the shoulder, again for a break in the traffic (another 20 mins) and run back across with the limping bike.

Lots of lessons here...

1. Take extra caution tieing stuff down.
2. Pull off on the right side of the f'ing freeway if, god willing, some part of the load falls off. (What an idiot I am...)

Anyway, no other people/cars were hurt, I'm still in one piece, and that lucky bike is fixed now.

ViribusUnits

Stuff happens folks.

Parts break, seals leak catastrophicly, tie downs break. It happens.

Sometimes it's lazyness, but much of the time it's broken parts.

My father had an oil seal on a bearing on an 18 wheel truck trailer go out. When it did, the bearing locked up a few seconds later. The spindle promptly broke off, and the whole brake drum wheel assymbly went rolling down the road at 40 mph. Luckly noboby got hit, and nothing got destoryed except the spindle and such on the trailer.

Did we know that the leak was leaking? Well, it wasn't leaking. For some odd reason, the seal rotted out, failed, drained the oil, and the rest is history. I've had things fall of trucks, simply because I didn't see them there. It happens. Anyone ever made a mistake? This is a little one. Anyone ever miss tied a knot? It happens. Loads shift in ways you don't expect, and your tie downs are completely inadquite. It happens.

Dodge the debree as best as you can, and call it a day.

Randy V

Was this you Doug (Perx)?:

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/carflip.mpg

Perx

Very funny Randy. I'm scarred for life.

marton

Driving through Phoenix once on the freeway (Black canyon highway?) and a bowling ball fell off the truck in front - nowhere to get away as vehicles on both side so I concentrated on taking it under the middle of the car. Made a lot of noise but did not seem to do any obvious damage.

Marton

BMWM3PORSCHE944

I was on an exit ramp and a wheel and tire popped off of an 18 wheeler who was in the opposite exit lane. The whole thing bounced about 5 feet from my car and then over it. Watching this thing roll and bounce toward me was quite frightening, I had nowhere to go and no where to hide..but thank Od it just bounced over me and went down an embankment.

Cameron

I checked the front right last night. No obvious damage and the car is tracking dead straight at highway speed. I am assuming for now that I got lucky.

Accidents do happen. I don't have an issue with that. Putting others at risk due to laziness or stupidity, that's where I get upset.

On the lighter side, when I was 15 I worked at a camp. Laclu, Ontario. Anyway, the owner, let's call him Johnny was getting on in years. My buddy and I did all of the cabin and grounds maintenance. Each week, we had to take a load to the local dump in the old Dodge A100. Since we were only 15 and didn't have driver's licence, Johnny would drive to the dump - public roads to get there.

Now the road is a two lane twisty country road. Narrow shoulder, blind corners, hills etc. We come around a bend and about 1/2 mile up, I see a big box in the middle of the road.

'Johnny', I say, 'there's a box on the road'. I look over at him and he is staring straight ahead.

'Johnny, there is a box on the road', I repeat. By now we are closing in and heading straight for it.

'JOHNNY, THERE IS A BOX On THE ROAD'. Still nothing.

Now we are about 20 feet from it and suddenly Johnny shouts, 'HOLY $HIT, THERE'S A BOX ON THE ROAD!!!!' as he yanks the steering wheel.

Thank goodness we were only going about 40 mph at the time. We missed the box, but it was all Johnny could do to keep the old dodge from fish tailing off of the highway. I look back to see all of the mettle drums rolling off of the back. I am saying to myself that this can't be happening.

Johnny brings the A100 to a stop, looks back and starts backing up. Now, at 15, I don't have my driver's license yet, but something is telling me that you should not be backing up a truck on a provincial highway, speed limit 60 mph, up a hill and around a blind curve. I say to myself 'if I see any sign of a car, I am jumping my *** out of this old Dodge into the ditch, I am too young to die'.

Well, Johnny must have lady luck up his a$$ because no cars appeared as he backed up a good 1/8 mile. I loaded up the mettle drums and away we went. I will never forget hearing his panicked voice when he finally saw the old box.

.....Cameron
'91 Euro GT

Eric

I still laugh everytime I see some clown driving home from the lumber yard with sheets of plywood twined to the roof of the Lincoln, Buick, K-car, etc.--every driver inevitably has an arm hanging out the window "helping to hold the load".

Or, they have 10" sections of PVC jutting at strange angles out a front window. Uhh, that's what trucks are for.

Sharks

I had an interesting experience in my 928 two summers ago. I was on one of the local expressways following a pickup with a camper top on the back. Luckily I was following within 3 car lengths as all of the sudden the camper top lifted off of his truck, flew over me and landed in the median. The only thing I was hit with was a McDonalds bag and a few left over fries. Needless to say I had to change my shorts when I got home.

Intrinsicate

There was a notorious case in West Germany, many years ago, when the driver of a big Benz drove over a pillar-jack that was lying in his lane on the autobahn. The jack flipped up, pierced the floor of the car, and performed a fatal colonoscopy on the poor unwitting driver. What a gruesome way to shuffle off this mortal coil!

PorKen

That's it, I'm putting a Kevlar blanket under my 'boys'...

heinrich

In my 944 I once drove over a tyre tread that had just been shed by a truck ahead. Not bad I thought ... just rubber, right? ... wrong. Killed my bellypan and front valence, and both fogs. The S4 was hit a few months ago by what looked like a golf ball on ist way down from a tee-off. I was sure it had deleted my fender, but on inspection thankfully it had hit right between the bumper cover and fender, the vinyl apparently absorbing the brunt of the impact. Another time I was hit by someone's flying gas cap as it popped off their car ... left a very unfriendly scratch in the 944.

True, many US states have so much debris on the roads that it's like a maze sometimes. I know that downtown Bellevue, Wa is a hotspot for debris, there's always something fun there to avoid.

Snowball the 81 white 928

wow. on return from trip to lovely crowded santa barbara, on i-15 between utah line and pocatello, some soccer family was hauling 3 expen$ive looking mountain bikes on a rack attached to back of pick-up truck. since they were hogging the left lane, i slowly passed on the right and noticed the bikes shaking etc. as soon as i passed, the rear bike fliipped out of the rack and smashed onto the pavement scattering millions of pieces of plastic while tumbling out of control. whatever wasn't smashed to pieces was probably bent up beyond repair. is was about a 1/2 mile before dodo noticed his debris and slammed on the brakes and exited the highway on the left side, right after an armco barrier over a small bridge. he pulled off after the barrier into a gravel area in a cloud of dust, i thought he would roll into the ditch and destroy the truck too. undamnbelievable. beware of bike racks! great thread here.

dr bob

A few summers ago we were headed home to the Los Angeles area from a weekend boating adventure in Laughlin, along the Colorado River. Driving west on I-40 and towing the boats, it looks like there's a pair of semi truck wheels (!) bouncing across the median well ahead of us. I got on the radio to the rest of the caravan and warned them to slow way down. We watched as, in apparent slow motion, those wheels bounced into our lanes, where they were met by a Camry that had passed us as we slowed. Honking didn't slow them down, but that pair of wheels did. Combined impact speed had to be well over 100 MPH, and the Camry didn't win. I was on the radio to the CHP before the Camry stopped rolling into the desert, and my GF was doing the same on the cell phone. Driver and passenger were killed instantly, young teenage girl in the back was a little bruised but not too broken. We stopped her bleeding and immobilized her head/neck while paramedics flew in. A quarter mile west of us on the opposite side sat the tractor, minus a pair of left rear wheels.

-------

CHP partially faults the driver of the Camry. Apparently, you are required to drive at a speed where you are able to avoid collisions with objects in the road. The fact that he was cruising in excess of 80 across an otherwise barren desert highway and not paying attention is probably the biggest factor, along with very poor timing. Ten or twenty seconds made the difference, and it could just as easily have been us or any of the travel bunch we had been out with.


Moral: Pay Attention Pay Attention Pay Attention