This morning, was driving on a two lane, 25mph road, with a bike lane on either side I saw a mattress & box spring, wrapped in plastic, in the bushes on the side of the road. I can easily see it coming off of a car, but wouldn’t you go back & pick up your brand new mattress? They’re not cheap & it’s not like the road is an interstate where you can’t turn around/back up.
However, on the very important items lost, this one absolutely takes the cake! (photo included)
I’ve found all kinds of things that have fallen out of cars and truck while riding my bicycle. At least a dozen cell phones. Money. Tools (probably left under the hood after repairs). Clothing. Bags of groceries. Books.
I don’t remember losing anything from my car; however, I have had a car stolen.
I knew someone who lost one of the T-top panels for his Firebird. Forgot to lock it down securely, maybe, or might have been faulty to start with. But it came off on the highway, at high speed, and shattered in spectacular fashion on the road.
Was a PITA to replace, too.
Not from my car. I was once driving on the highway behind a tradies van and his ladder flipped off to the side and landed in the lane next to us.
Not to my knowledge.
However, about five years ago I was driving on a two-lane (one lane each way) country road with a 55 mph speed limit. An approaching truck lost a mattress just before it passed me - I tried to avoid it but it happened really fast and somehow the mattress ended up underneath my Saab’s front tires and I mattress-surfed into the ditch. A kind person stopped and helped me extricate the mattress from my front end, but the pickup truck driver never even slowed down.
Once ran over a bumper from somebody’s Ford Pinto. Saw it fall off, bent it in half.
Once ran over somebody’s mattress. Tore my muffler off.
Yep, people do not appreciate the value of the backup … One extra in case the first fails.
I used to have a pair of very unique water bottles that we got from one of our clients. I carried one everywhere, and if I left it somewhere I’d use the other until I got the first one back. So people who knew me knew my water bottle.
One time I put one of the bottles on top my car and drove off with it there. Of course I lost it. I thought someone I knew in my small town might see it and say something but it was never mentioned.
A paycheck flew out of my car one Friday evening between work and the bank. I didn’t realize I’d lost it until got to the bank. I was able to retrace my path and found it laying out in someone’s yard, about ten feet off the road.
Driving open bed pick up trucks a lot over the last few decades, I’ve lost a few things. The most memorable were the box springs and mattress on I-40 just east of Nashville when I didn’t check my nephew’s tie downs.
Then there was the time I lost laundry…the delicates to be exact when the bungee cord came off over the basket. I just happened to look back in time to see fat lady granny panties go flying out the back and land in the road and the car behind me. When I was able to pull over, I sat there for a couple of minutes with tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks before I could get out and rescue a few pair.
Not me, but a girl I worked with came back from lunch one day telling us how she lost a windshield wiper. It was pouring buckets so she turned her wipers on full speed and one wiper gets flung into the car next to her at the light and lands on the hood of their car. She just acted like nothing happened and took off when the light turned green, the little wiper stump waving at her. She couldn’t see a thing but managed to make it back to the office somehow.
My brother saw a hubcap on the side of a road that was a ringer for the one he lost last month, because it was the one he lost last night month. :smack:
One I lost a big bundle of downed tree limbs I was hauling out to the composting site. It flipped right out of the bed of my truck in the center of the busiest road in town. What FUN!
In the days before I had a truck, a friend took me to the hardware store to buy supplies to make a large shop work table. We stuffed all the MDF and wood in the back of his truck (which was loaded with all of his tools, and pulled out of the parking lot, at which time it all flew out of the back of the truck. We had to stop in the middle of a busy road and load it back up, this time securing it better. If you look closely, you can still see the tire tracks where someone ran over the MDF, on the table top.
I was transporting a light table (drafting) in a truck and as soon as I hit about 50 the wind plucked the glass top up into the air and shattered it spectacularly in the slow lane of the Dallas N. Tollway.
I’ve also lost a side table off a Weber grill and a cheap dresser while moving.
Once I flew out the back of a pickup. We’d just tubed some river in Arizona, a stranger was giving us a lift back to the start, I stepped up into the bed with a beer in hand and he floored it. I did a perfect 360 backflip and landed simultaneously on my feet and butt, beercan still in hand and no drop spilled. Instead of getting seriously hurt it fortunately just provided a great laugh for dozens of other tubers.
My parents lost a suitcase full of clothes & presents driving home from a Christmas gathering one year. It was in the luggage rack with five other suitcases and not secured properly. I tried to get Dad to put a tarp over everything but he refused because no precipitation was in the forecast.
By and far this is the number one singe item I see that’s become detached from vehicles… tradesmen’s ladders.
I had a crumpled up McDonald’s bag with sandwich wrappers in it laying on the floor on the passenger side. Cruising down the highway with the windows open, suddenly the winds conspired to form a micro-tornado that floated this bag up off of the floor. For maybe five seconds it spun around at chest-height, right between the glovebox and seatback. I tried a few times to subdue it wtih one arm, but no luck - it finally shot out of the window. I felt bad about that; I despise people who intentionally throw trash out of their cars, and although it was not my intention, I had littered just as surely as any of those putzes. Just glad no cop saw it happen, because they surely would have called bullshit on my whirlwind story.
I lost so many helium balloons that way as a kid that I eventually got Dad to keep the windows closed whenever I had one.
Mattress on the side of the road? Curb service!