I did this morning on my way to work. I had just gotten a green light to cross a major arterial and saw the paint on the road just across the intersection. I hadn’t been this way since last Friday and there was no paint then. As I drove through the paint it sounded wet. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw tracks from my right side tires following me. Hmm, the paint was wet. I continued on to work and I couldn’t see much in the dimly lit parking lot. I left work early and the damage was more severe then I anticipated. The inside of my right from wheel well and from mud flap are now yellow. Streaks of paint are randomly strewn across the passenger door and side of the pickup box. The rear wheel well and mud flap have some paint on them but not as much as the front ones. I have wider than stock wheels and tires on my Toyota pickup and that is most likely why I have paint on the side of the body. I have an appointment at an auto detailing shop in an hour, the owner says he can get the paint off. I sure hope so, I’m proud of the condition I have kept this truck. And I’ll drive around paint I see in the road from now on.
That should be front wheel well and front mud flap.
Sorry about your truck. I hope they can clean it off.
There’s a huge splotch of spilled white paint in a highway I travel often. It is just before the city limits, situated so that I use it as my cue to cancel the cruise control and drop my speed from 70 to 50mph. If it ever wears off the road, I’ll probably zoom on in and get pulled over for speeding.
One time, while meandering up to a large intersection onto the highway, I realized that there was not some paint, a little paint, or even a splash or two of paint there-in. There was, quite literally, a purple intersection with slight blemishes of black here and there. “Weird,” thought I, and continued onto the highway.
Well, on the highway it continued. A line arose gallantly from the tumultuous, alien-bloody intersection onto the highway, and on and on and on. It appeared to be a tire track of some kind, a really purple tire track that had re-inking capabilities. “Weird,” thought I, and continued on down the highway.
Well, so did it. We were, estimating as conservative as possible, 3 miles down the road before it appeared to be dwindling. It gradually faded into the normal gray tone of the pavement after awhile, and all was well. Sort of. One must wonder why there was such a purple intersection and such a purple line that extended forever, a color quite queer to be shipped in such large amounts via a roadway.
Brace yourself. I’ve seen cars get totalled because the cost to remove the highway paint (EVIL stuff) exceeded the market value of the car. Typically you can settle in such a way that you don’t have to give up the car, but your insurance doesn’t pay to get it all off either.
If you carry Comprehensive on your car insurance, file a claim–shouldn’t affect your rates and you’ll get some assistance with the expenses of cleaning up. Washington has some interesting car title rules, however–get all the details about salvage titles in Washington before you accept a payment for the claim. If you end up with a total.
A few months ago a can of bright red paint flew off a truck in front of my house. After a few hours, someone had come along and washed the paint away. It was a little gross, as the paint looked like blood.
Once at the Norfolk Navy base I came along a few minutes after the mess happened. A flatbed truck turned too hard and a dozen or so 5 gallon pails of green primer slid off the side and blew open on impact.
That primer is damn near industructable, I wonder how many years it took for the stain to wear away.
The paint I drove through appeared to be a water based interior paint. The detail shop got it all off the body, I’m not worried about the wheel wells or mud flaps. With the wash and wax, my truck is looking pretty spiffy right now. This morning the paint spot was a lot bigger from other folks that drove through it. Even though it should be dry, I drove around it just to be safe.
Can’t you just take the car to Maaco and they can sandblast it off and repaint the car like they would do anyway for a repaint job? Unless the standard cost for a Maaco job is enough to total the car, I don’t see the problem.
It’s all in the repair technique. If it’s a $99.95 paint job, odds are the techniques used in the refinish will not satisfy the insurance company’s obligation to restore the vehicle to its pre-loss condition. Most companies have a lifetime guaranty on all work performed as part of an insurance claim. No way in hell am I going to guaranty a repaint that is likely to be poorly prepped, poorly masked, poorly matched and poorly blended. You can take your owner-retained total loss settlement and pain the car with nail polish if you want, but the insurance company won’t get behind it for the lifetime of the car.
Whether or not it’s a problem really depends on the total area and body panels affected. The OP is probably only looking at one body panel with minimal area. Most irksome are folks who get a barely visible overspray all over their car–the right kind of paint annihilates the finish and the whole car has to get repainted.
Over where my mom lives, this happens all the time. The running theory is that a group of Bad Kids spill paint all over the roads just to ruin the cars of complete strangers. It wouldn’t really surprise me if it were true, I guess. It is odd that so much paint would be “accidentally” spilled.
A few months (a year?) ago, some white paint was spilled on the eastbound Bay Bridge, and was visible for months. Haven’t seen it recently, but it’s possible I just don’t notice it any more.
On the approach to eastbound CA-24 lies the remains of what I hope to god was a bunch of red paint that was spilled.
Driving up I-5 last week, there were some red sections of road, but they looked more rust-colored, and appeared on bridges, which- and maybe I’m paranoid- is fucking scary.