There’s a situation on my commute, two neatly cut, axle track-width spaced grooves starting in the middle of the road that gently curve into the ditch a short ways ahead. That must have been entertaining.
The ones that have always bothered me are in a tunnel, where you see tire tracks halfway up the side of the wall. I mean, what the fuck are these crazy people doing, and how can I make sure it is always some other time than when I am in there?
The Long Beach Grand Prix route was right next to the marina where I lived for a few years. After the barriers were taken away I would drive over part of the route to and from work marveling at the assorted marks on the road that were visible until the rains came months later. The smell of burnt rubber lasted several weeks.
If they start in the middle of the road and gently curve off to the side, there’s a decent chance that it’s a trailer’s brakes locking up. If the curve is gentle then aside from a bit of smoke and noise from the tires, it probably wasn’t all that dramatic.
The flurry of marks caused by a trailer out of control (as mentioned by DesertDog) would have been much more exciting.
It’s kind of sobering though to look at some of these marks and realize that the situation might not have ended with someone simply checking their underwear, and that you might be looking at the remnants of someone either loosing their life or getting severely injured.
Used to be that the center of a driving lane was pretty much black the entire length from dripping oil. Now it’s just after bumps.
I drive a curvy often snow covered two lane highway. There is one point where they guard rail got taken out a couple of times a year. The highway department said enough of that and put up some jersey bariors.
I went up fishing a couple of weeks ago and in both the downward and upward sections of the road were some deep dark burn out marks that made some very tight Ss for about 100 feet and then they happened again about half a mile on. I was mainly wondering how much control that person had of their vehicle and if there was any rubber left on their tires when they made it back out of the State park 30 miles to the nearest exit.
Those are usually the street racer wannabes in the wee hours. Don’t be in the tunnel between midnight and sunrise and you should be good to go.
Of course cocaine-fueled police chases can happen at any time, but in most locales they’re a drop in the bucket compared to folks playing wannabe racer games late at night.
Or so I’m told.
Sometimes the police themselves are the ones racing on the streets. A couple of young people in my hometown died when a couple of police officers decided to drag race (94 MPH) on the main commercial street late one night about eleven years ago.
I’ve got skidmarks on my heart, but I’m quite aware what happened just not why.
I guessing you didn’t anticipate that one.
I’m not the only soul who’s accused of hit and run,
Tire tracks all across your back, uh-huh, I can see you had your fun
Me too, I usually think it’s a deer crossing the road.
There’s guardrail sections in DFW (I-35 mixmaster, I’m looking at you!) that are festooned at the curves with long streaks of various paint colors, where the driver didn’t quiiiiite make the curve.
Guard rails are passe, many freeways have concrete k-rails, especially along the median.
I’ve seen wiggledy tire skids criss-crossing, and then for the grand finale, tire tracks showing ALL FOUR WHEELS on the k-rail!
Being stuck in rush hour traffic is so blissfully tame compared to whatever those skid marks showed!
~VOW
Tangentially related, the highway that I drive to work on has cable barriers in the median. I am surprised how often these cables are damaged. It seems that about once a month someone hits the cables and takes out a hundred or so feet of the barrier. The highway department seems to repair them fairly quickly though. The barriers work very well though, as there are actually two barriers that parallel each other, separated by maybe 6 feet. I’ve never seen a case where the car went through one barrier and damaged the second set.