There is a lot of construction going on my neighborhood, and it made me think again about something I’ve wondered for a long time. When it rains, a lot of the water pools along the curb because the street is higher in the center. I was thinking that this is because people park along the curb and the continual weight of the cars changes the grade of the street across it, but even on some new streets or streets that are resurfaced, they are seem to be built like this. Is this for drainage, or is it a side effect of the parking? I find it really annoying because on some streets, it makes it hard to open the doors of your car, or the doors scrape along the curb.
I believe this is called the camber; it causes surface water to run to the edges, where the drains are (that’s the reason for it).
Its definitely for drainage. My family owned a mobile home park years ago and we went the alternate route so that we did not have to build expensive concrete curbs. The middle was low. This works well for small low volume low speed roads.
However, making the roads low in the middle also tends to draw cars towards the middle of the road. Not a good idea for drivers that are not paying attention.
I think that concrete curbs used to be built high to allow for additional overlayment of asphalt. This shouldn’t be an issue today though. Most asphalt is ground down, and reused for overlayment.
You’re close. Camber is a term used to describe the wheel alignment correction to compensate for this curvature in the road surface. This is why your car always handles better on the right side of the road instead of the left. The camber compensates for the curvature of the road when you’re on the right, and increases the curvature’s effect when you’re in the left lane.
As to the OP, yeah, it’s definitely for drainage.
This would make much more sense if there were drains in places other than at the corners, like in the middle of the block. This seems to leave a lot of standing water in places. It is one thing to have the height of the road surface be higher in the center for drainage, but on some roads, it is extreme.
Perhaps on those roads it’s important that the surface drains quickly, or maybe it’s just been implemented wrong, I dunno, not seen anything I’d describe as ‘extreme’ around here.
The correct term for the raised center of the road is crown.
Yeah but,
Tell a Road and Bridge guy that you have a camber problem and he will ask what is wrong with your car. Tell him you have a crown problem ask you “what road”
been there.
Another case of ‘usage proves the dictionary wrong’ no doubt, but over here in the UK it’s camber and tracking
According to Collins dictionary Mangetout and Chas.E are both right.
The dictionary gives five noun definitions of camber, two of which are:
“1. a slight upward curve to the centre of the surface of a road, ship’s deck, etc. … 3. an outward inclination of the front wheels of a road vehicle so that they are slightly closer together at the bottom than at the top.”
The definition of crown contains: “8. the centre part of a road, esp. when it is cambered.”
The difference in emphasis or usage may be an American/British thing (Mangetout is British like me IIRC).
There may not be sufficient drains throughout the length of a road, and that would lead to localised ponding, but having designed roadways I can confirm that it’s very difficult to suddenly switch from a heavily cambered section to a flat (or much less curved) one just because you have fewer drainage outlets to work with.
Let me add that as someone who lives in a state where raising the center of the road is almost unknown, that a flat road bed causes inordinate amounts of problems. Even in the lightest rain, you’re fighting through puddles of standing water and hoping that some idiot doesn’t lose control of his car due to hydroplaning. Not to mention the enormous slabs of ice that form in winter, completely covering the road way. This, of course, is totally unhelped by a highway department which thinks that since we’re south of the Mason-Dixon line we don’t get snow :rolleyes: , so they don’t bother salting the roads!
I love it when the Anglo-American thing makes an appearance in a thread, it really is quite stimulating (in a non-sexual way, of course)
If you run on city streets much, this slope is one reason you should try to alternate the side of the road you jog on. I developed knee problems that were aggravated by always running on a slope.
Jill, why are you jogging in the road?
1.)Because I don’t like going in circles for an hour.
2.)I think I’m more likely to get injured - sprain an ankle or fall - running on uneven terrain (dirt trails, etc.), though I occasionally do that, too.
3.) It happens to join up with the front porch of my house.
[sub]Wish I didn’t have to continue the hijack, but I don’t think this deserves its own thread.[/sub]
I’m not sure I get the “jogging in circles” part, but that’s probably because I’m not a jogger. The reason I ask is because I am a biker, and as such am required to ride in the road while motorists try to smack me with their SUV’s side view mirrors. It’s a tight squeeze, to say the least. And when a I come up behind a jogger, well, somebody is going to lose and usually it’s me.
Right after I submitted that, I searched and of course there already is a thread on joggers in the road. I’ll take my concerns over yonder.
Huh? As far as I know, camber is the “angle” the cars wheels have in respect to the axle. And it is to facilitate cornering. Sports cars use a larger camber to make them corner well. The downside is that they lose comfort because of it (and some other reasons, like stiffer suspension, but I digress).
If I understand you correctly, the cars wheels (any cars wheels?) will be cambered such that it’ll drift to the left on a completely flat surface, so as to compensate the effect a “crowned” road will have on a neutral car: that is, a neutral car would drift to the right. (We’re assuming driving on the right hand side of the road here, of course.)
I don’t think this can be true. Here are the reasons why it doesn’t make sense to me:
[ul][li]If a car would handle better on the right hand side of the road, it should handle terribly in the left lane of a two lane highway. Unless you’re saying highways are slanted one way instead of “crowned”. Which I doubt.[/li][li]Camber is static. Setting it up as you describe would indeed provide some counterpart for the “drift-to-the-right” on crowned roads, but only at a given speed for a given level of “crowning”. If I were to drive on a road with “crown angle X”, the camber setup as you described would only work perfectly for speed Y. Slower than Y would mean the car would drift toward the middle, and faster would mean the car would still drift towards the outside of the road.[/li][li]I have on numerous occasions driven a LHD car in the United Kingdom. Your theory suggests that I should have experienced significant handling problems. After all, my car would be “cambered” to suit a right lane, and I was using the left ones ALL the time.[/li]I experienced no problems of differences whatsoever.
It strikes me as somewhat dangerous to set a car up in such a way that it’ll handle differently when cornering to the left, than when cornering to the right. If you have to make an evasive manoeuver, you want a car that’s predictable and balanced. Not a car that will oversteer more easily on right hand turns than it will on left hand turns.[/ul]Could you explain your theory a little further, and perhaps back it up?
Just to confirm the UK understanding:
The middle of the road is the crown, on the side of the road is the curb and the gradient in between the two is the camber.
We also have road signs – far too few in my opinion as the glazed look of many passing motorists is a picture – saying ‘Beware - Adverse Camber’. The signs cause more accidents than the damn road.
I also agree with Coldie - it doesn’t seem to make much sense to align the wheels with anything other than the axel not least because any camber will vary significantly from one stretch of road to another.