Quote:
Originally Posted by RailroadJoe
Rule of thumb, stay 3 seconds behind car in front. Works at all speeds.
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...and brk-int... It doesn't always work.
About a month ago I was leaving on a business trip from Manchester Airport. I left the lake and was a few miles north of the airport, where 93, 293, and 101 all join and the road is at times 5 lanes wide.
I was in the middle lane, doing the speed limit, with no one ahead of me for several hundred yards. There were cars on either side of me in the other lanes.
All of a sudden, bounding down the lake toward me, bouncing at least 3-4 feet with each bounce, and tumbling madly, is what I still assume was a water pump. It was a large piece of metal, probably about 40-50 lbs, with short pipe stubs sticking out in several directions.
To this day, I have no idea where it came from, or where it ended up. Thankfully I was the only one in the car. I moved left as much as I could without hitting the car to my left and it hit me on the next bounce, at headlight level.
I can only imagine what would have happended had I hit it on a higher bounce and a bit to the left.
Plastic and glass exploded everywhere. By the time I was able to safely move across lanes and pull over, I was far down the road from where it happened. It wasn't going to be safe to go back. Luckily the car was still driveable, so I continued on to the airport and my trip.
A week later, the assessment... Almost $3,000 of damage, crushed radiator, several structural parts of the body mangled badly, hood pushed back, quarter panel destroyed, ac compressor compressed. Imagine what it would have done to a human body.
Check your truck beds.