Secure that shit in your pickup truck, Jethro

Yeah, you. In the run-down looking pickup truck. With your friend Billy Joe Bob in the seat next to you. The one who merged onto the interstate just a little in front of me the other day as I was driving back to town. Just two exits before mine.

I know you like carrying stuff in your pickup truck. I can understand hauling small miscellaneous items on those back dirt roads, really I can. Not much speed. No big deal.

But do you not have brains enough to realize that on the interstate, those 80+ MPH winds can easily pick up loose items in your truck bed and send them flying? What, you don’t? For chrissakes it’s near the same force wind that picked up that branch and blew it through the window of your double-wide when the hurricane came through.

Well, you think you could tie that shit down next time?

I don’t know what that thing was that flew from your truck bed, straight at my car, no way for me to avoid it. At first, I thought it was just something really light, a small box perhaps. But the KERCHUNK THUNK KA-CHUNK I heard indicated to me that it was a bit more solid than a box. Then I saw it shoot out behind me in the rear view mirror and bounce under the next vehicle.

I didn’t think too much of it until I pulled onto my street and heard a scraping/grinding noise.

Well, imagine my joy, you pustulent wretch, when I took my car in to a shop and found out that the right front strut was bent, enough so that part of the metal was rubbing up against the tire. The mechanic let me come over to the lift and look at it – it definitely did not match the good one on the left. Fortunately the rack and pinion it connects to was fine, but still… the repair was not exactly cheap.

While I also had the front brake pads replaced, which I found I would have needed soon anyways (so I assign you no blame for the brakes), I suppose I have you to thank, you festering gob, for the majority of the $600 repair bill. (replacing the damaged parts and having the alignment re-done).

Now please do one of the following:

  1. Meet Mr. Rope. He’s good for tying things down.
  2. Grow a brain on that rock you call a head and remove loose items from the truck bed if you’re going to be driving at higher speeds.
  3. If you won’t do 1 or 2, get the fuck off the interstate.

Give the guy a break. He had to get the General Lee 'cross the county line 'fore’n the Sheerif catches 'em.

I gree. ‘taint Jethro’s fault. Thems interstates is for trash distro-beau-ton. I’m hearin’ them landfills are bad.

But if ya spread it out over 50 miles, it’s almost like it 'taint there atall.

We had an incident here about a year ago where someone had a bunch of unsecured junk in the back of their vehicle while driving down the freeway. A large piece of plywood or something flew out and straight through the windshield of the car behind crushing the face of the driver. The good news is she eventually came out of the coma and they managed to mostly reconstruct her face. Although of course she looks completely different. The bad news is she was blinded and she had no medical insurance.

The ridiculous part of the story is that when they finally tracked down the offending driver they couldn’t find anything to charge him with. I think the guy ended up getting a traffic ticket. Last I heard the victims family and friends were sponsoring a bill to make carelessly endangering others with unsecured cargo a crime.

Aha! One of my favorite pet peeves!

I’ve lost quite a few tires to crap left in the road, some by official City of Omaha haulers, such as the jugheads from Jethroville–supposed “hurricane cleanup experts”-- who were hired to clean up after a disastrous ice storm broke down hundreds of trees back in 1997( They started out with full trucks and got to the landfill with half or less).

A lot of the blame goes to law enforcement. I’ve seen a lot of crappy looking trucks with haphazardly-loaded junk aboard just breeze by speed trap cops because they were at or below the limit.

The Interstates were originally designed so that the sloppily-suspended under-braked, bias-ply-tired cars of the late 50s and early 60s could safely travel them at 75mph. Interstate speed limits below 75 in open, rural areas for today’s cars are simply a political artifice aimed at exacting another "hidden"tax from the motorist.

Badly secured loads are dangerous, but tickets for such don’t run up the same revenue as those for 5-over an artificially-low speed limit.

Side comment, of karma in action (and OH, it felt so good!):

I was accellerating up an on-ramp, looking to merge onto the local interstate. Some badass in a T-top Trans Am passed me on the right (where there really was no other lane) and shot onto the highway ahead of me, cutting back in fairly close to the front of my vehicle. I grumbled, but what are ya gonna do, right?

Not 30 seconds later, somehow the wind caught the roof section above the driver’s side and whipped it up into the air like a frisbee. It sailed, spinning, to the left of the roadway and smashed into a bajillion pieces against the concrete divider between the two sides of the interstate. I had a perfect view.

That was a nice moment.

Yeah, but…

you get to keep whatever falls off of it!! :smiley:

Pendgwen, I thought of that woman (wish I could think of her name) when I saw this thread. She is now blind, has brain damage, and can barely speak and the guy, who has a criminal record, mind you, gets off scot free. Justice really sucks sometimes.

Yeah, well at least this vehicle had a driver in it. Mebbe two drivers, from the looks of it. And I doubt either one knew how to use a laptop. :wink:

Oh, and Monstre, why didn’t you get Jethro’s license number? You could have contacted the police and let them know what happened. And you could have put an ad in the paper to see if anyone, like the guy behind you, had problems too with a truck matching your discription. Then you could have gotten a civil suit brought against Jethro or at least taken him to small claims court.

Hope you took photos of your damage and the site where the junk came off his truck.

Tikki–who has never sued anyone. Honest. :slight_smile:

That is insane. Absolutely insane. I mean, if the woman had died, would that have amounted to manslaughter? or still just a traffic ticket for littering or something?

shaking head incredulously

No, largely because I didn’t realize there was any damage until later. And the site was the interstate, with heavy traffic in both lanes, at about 75-80 MPH. I doubt I would have been able to FIND the exact site or the debris itself, even if I had tried to double back and get on the interstate again at an earlier exit.

Sure, but I really didn’t want his chicken wire or his tobacco-juice-in-a-bottle collection…

Her name is Maria Federici .

Have you seen what that stuff goes for on eBay?

Jethroes in our neck of the woods tie their dogs in the back of their pick-ups as they hare down the freeway. Rarely does a day go by when you don’t pass the lifeless lump that is a decapitated Rover or Fido lying on the side of the road.

mm

I also find irritating the “shredded tire” debris often left behind – usually looks like it came from some semi (i.e. from a BIG tire) that had a blowout or whose tire ripped, and the remains were left behind. I’ve had to swerve around such debris a number of times. Usually it’s smaller chunks, but have had to maneuver around pieces large enough to likely cause problems if you hit them.

The tire debris usually comes from a “retread” letting go. I guess replacing the outer section of a worn down tire is cheaper than making a whole new one. I was behind a car carrier when one of his tires let loose - rubber pieces flew everywhere. I’m glad I wasn’t too close and could avoid the debris, it could definately trash your car if you were right behind it.

Does anyone know how or by whom this stuff is removed from the highways? Does it migrate to the edge of the road by being continually run over?
I’ve always been curious about that. Ooh, I just got an idea for the “worst job” thread (concerning Rover and Fido).

I don’t know – but I frequently see such debris in the emergency lane, which is not the safest place, either.

I had a blowout on the interstate a year or two ago, and had to pull to the emergency lane and put my small emergency tire on, to get me to an exit where I could find a place to get a new tire.

When I was done, I started back up in the emergency lane, to get enough speed to merge into the normal lane. And as I started accelerating, I saw something ahead of me in the emergency lane. I started slowing down, but it was too close to try to screech to a halt and avoid. So I aimed over the center of it, thinking it looked like tired debris, and I’d make the wheels miss it at least.

Well… not so. Turned out to be quite solid, and I had caught it and was dragging it right under the center of the car. I quickly came to a halt, and checked underneath. It was more like a rounded chunk of rock, or concrete, or something. And I couldn’t free it where it was, so I had to get out the dammed jack, and jack the car up AGAIN, to free it.

Frickin interstate debris. I eagerly await the day we get flying cars.

i was riding in an 18-wheeler last year, when we saw a mattress lying in the center of the highway. My driver, being the fun-loving guy he is, instead of swerving around it, swerves into it, ruinning right over the fucker with about 9 of his tires. Our laughter doubled when we saw a pick-up truck a few hundred feet up the road, backing up in the breakdown lane, with a boxspring in the back. I would have paid good money to see the look on his face when he discovered his mattress.