My brother was behind a car loaded with mattresses with a child on top to weight it down. He got away as quick as he could , dialing 911… Saw the news reports,yeah,same car,child killed.
I remember this happening in Denver when I lived there, late 1990s. I cannot remember if the father (who was driving) was ultimately charged but I do recall a lot of media debate about whether he should have been.
I was behind a flatbed truck last year on the freeway when the entire cargo let loose - it was carrying a stack of large PVC pipes. They bounced all over the road and pandemonium ensued. Also once had a mattress fly off an oncoming truck on a two-lane road, it caught on my front bumper. Driver kept on going.
I’ve seen enough furniture, mattresses, ladders and other large items along the freeway to conclude that poorly-fastened down cargo is a common issue.
I remember during a car trip when I was young. It was night. Most of the car occupants were asleep. In fact, myself and my dad may have been the only ones awake. We passed a large truck. Not a Semi but something like large moving truck. For some reason, it’s muffler, (not the tail pipe) was glowing red hot. In the dark desert highway, the glow of that thing was like something out of a David Lynch movie. Except David Lynch hadn’t made any movies at this point so it was really freaking weird.
I just remembered another one, that I’m glad I didn’t actually witness. In the Bay Area, near Sunol on I-680, Thanksgiving morning about 12 years ago, traffic suddenly slowed down (where it usually doesn’t). A few minutes later I passed the bloody remains of a large dog in the middle of the road. It immediately clicked in my head that the dog must have either jumped or fallen out of the back of a pickup truck. Just as disturbing, there was no one on the side of the road, so whoever was driving the truck either never noticed, or just kept going anyway.
Fortunately, I rarely see dogs in the backs of trucks anymore… but when I do, I think of this incident, and have an urge to get the driver pull over so I can throttle him.
What amazes me his how the driver managed to go over half a mile before the car broke. In fact, it may have been closer to a mile - I think you have to go south and do a U-turn and head north to the IHOP from the Home Depot.
My friends and I have a shorthand for these loads. “He needs more orange twine.”
Next time you are at a Home Depot look around the parking lot, odds are at least one idiot is tying something down very poorly with their orange twine.
Once in a blue moon I see a car on the street, with three wheels. That is, one is missing. Usually it’s a front wheel. How the car stays upright I have no idea, nor do I know how it manages to make turns(as It sometimes does)…
This is nothing compared to some of the previous entries, but what the heck: I was driving in a heavy snowstorm on a highway. I was going the speed limit, because absolutely everyone else was, even though everyone should have been traveling much more slowly. And then, zooming by everyone as though we were standing still, came a flatbed truck, pulling a house. A small house, but still. (No, it wasn’t a shed.)
Completely tangential, but I just thought of it.
Friend volunteered with a horse rescue because she had a secure fenced paddock. A very large horse died in her paddock of natural causes. The horse rescue didn’t have immediate funds to dispose of the dead horse, and we found out that the local dump would take dead animals if they were delivered directly to the appropriate part of the dump. So.
I had a full-sized pick-up truck at the time, and she sweet-talked some guys doing local road work into loading the dead horse into the back of my truck. It looked very dead in there. Legs and hooves sticking up in the air, head and neck hanging over the side. I stopped for gas on the way to the dump. Guy came out of the gas station, walked slowly around the huge, rigid dead horse upside down in my truck, and asked, “Is it sick?”
:smack:
You stunned him just as he was waking up!
I once saw a car with a sheet of plywood loaded directly on the roof. The four people in the car (including the driver) all had one hand out of their windows and were holding it in place as the car crawled along the road.
I have no idea if they made it home with the board, all of their fingers, or indeed a functional engine (since they probably went all the way in first gear)
We have a few low bridges here, too. Last fall there was a school bus full of kids coming home from a field trip. The driver thought it would be nice to drive through the Arboretum. He took the top off the bus.
I once helped someone pick up wooden dining room chairs. They were in boxes. We thought we had bungeed them down well, but as it turned out, we didn’t. As we were going about 75 on an interstate, I heard her say “Oh, shit!” in time to look in the side view mirror and see two of them fly off, hit the road, and explode. A couple of cars had to swerve, but we were very lucky. We pulled over, cleared off the debris, and drove home shaking.
Saturday night, about 10 PM, I was driving along the northern edge of Chicago. The street’s 4 lanes with a planted median, speed limit 30. The section I was on goes through a residential area I know that’s fairly quiet, and I’ve driven this route frequently over the years. I heard some really loud BANG, which scared me a bit because I’ve NEVER heard anything like that in this area. I continue for 1/2 mile and encounter the source of the BANG: an accident that had just occurred at a side street intersection. I didn’t get a good look at the damage, but there was one car in the middle of the intersection and one just off the street I was on.
I’m scared of anyone yapping on the phone, or worse, texting/playing some stupid game, while driving, regardless of age.
Poorly secured loads in pickup beds and such seem quite common around here. So does the “charming” bit of unannounced turns across multiple lanes.
Reminds me of this:
Fishtailing trailers scare the snot out of me, and I will do whatever it takes to get as far away from them as possible.
Backstory; I was going west on a 2 lane highway, an eastbound Bronco towing a heavily fishtailing boat and trailer crests the hill in front of me. The trailer broke loose and hit the car in front of me, the Bronco began flipping sideways down the road, and the 24’ boat that was on the trailer popped into the air and smashed onto the passenger side of my roof, flattening it down to the door. The boat continued for ~60 feet, taking out two road signs and carving a huge gash in the ground.
The passenger in the Bronco was thrown out of a window on the first or second roll, she died a few days later, everyone else survived with minor scratches, if the boat had landed 3 feet to left I would be dead. The police estimated the guy driving the Bronco had to be going at least 80mph while towing a trailer rated for 45mph.
The two scariest sights I can recall offhand:
A few years back, I saw a motorcyclist riding on one wheel at about 80 mph on the Beltway (I think I posted about that here in fact).
And once in NC, we were driving on a 2-lane state road and a car decided to pass us - when there was a car coming the other way. My friend who was driving, and the car coming the other way, both managed to swerve half off the road which is why I’m here to tell this. There were 3 cars abreast for one hard-stopping instant.
Dump truck dropped it’s load of gravel on the highway. It got spread out pretty good, it was a couple of inches deep I guess.
I got there RIGHT after it happened. Going about 65mph. Couldn’t avoid it or stop in time. Hitting that loose gravel, at that speed was interesting.
Are you sure you weren’t in a movie?
