Advocacy & Safety - Clusterbombed by unsecured load

On my ride today, I was passed by one of those construction trucks with a bunch of unsecured stuff in the bed. You know the type... usually there's a bunch of buckets and tools haphazardly thrown in the back. This one even had its liftgate down. Just after passing me, it hit a deep pothole. A whole toolchest flew off the back and came crashing down on the road spilling all sorts of tools and asundries all over. There were hammers, screwdrivers, SCREWS!, NAILS!, tape measures, etc... right in my path. I was doing about 22MPH and barely managed to swerve out of the way of the debris field. After clearing the hazard area, I tried to wave and yell at the driver to come back and pick up his stuff but he kept on going oblivious to the fact that he left behind probably a hundred dollars worth of tools on the road. It's too bad I was just into my ride and didn't want to carry around the tools otherwise I would have made off with some of it. Instead, I picked up as much as I could, rode to the nearest police station (1/2 mile), and handed it to the officer manning the desk.

Cyclists like you are so cool.

I remember driving on the freeway when I noticed the driver ahead had a mattress flopping in the wind. I thought, "That looks like it'll come loose." It did.

I flopped off the back right into my car's path. I swerved just in time.

I don't know what it would have been like to run over a mattress at 60 mph.

Originally posted by Pete Clark
I don't know what it would have been like to run over a mattress at 60 mph.

A friend of mine was driving along the expressway in his Jeep Grand Cherokee when the truck in front of him which was carrying a transmission, hit a bump and the tranny flew out of the back of the truck. My friend ran over the tranny and the suspension took it fine but part of the tranny caught the pumpkin of his rear diff housing and flipped up smashing into the liftgate and pretty much caving in his rear end. At least the damages were repairable and no one was injured. I'm not sure what would have happened to him had he hit the tranny with a car instead of his Jeep.

I have hit a dead deer in a car before. It was in the left lane of I-94 in Wisconsin. I was doing around 65 at night. I managed to swerve the front end to avoid it but my rear passenger tyre hooked a part of the carcass. This caused the car to swap ends and I ended up in the middle lane going backwards watching a semi barrelling down on me with smoke coming out of its squealing tyres as it was hard-braking. I quickly shoved the car in reverse and accelerated going backwards to open the distance. When I was sure there was enough room, I whipped the car around and spun 180 degrees to face forwards. I then pulled off to the side of the road to inspect the damage. There wasn't any except for a lot of blood splattered across the back right side of the car. My passengers were pretty impressed with my driving and I myself couldn't believe I had pulled that off. I was too rattled to continue driving so we switched drivers.

I've actually had a boxspring fly off the roof of a car and hit me on the highway (note:you often see such poorly secured loads on the weekend closest to the end of the month...), and once had an entire 4' x 8' piece of drywall hit my truck, both times with little resulting damage.

Around here there are actually laws about having unsecured loads (i.e. it's not supposed to happen). If it had been me, I would have recorded his # and paid a visit to my friendly local police officer.

Originally posted by Chris L
Around here there are actually laws about having unsecured loads (i.e. it's not supposed to happen). If it had been me, I would have recorded his # and paid a visit to my friendly local police officer.

The police actually asked me his plate number but I was unable to catch it in time. I just gave them a description of the truck.

Originally posted by D*Alex
...(note:you often see such poorly secured loads on the weekend closest to the end of the month...)

Interesting, yet I'll bet accurate observationD*Alex :roflmao: We have laws about securing loads too, yet those people moving out of their apartment in the middle of the night on the last weekend of the month can't be bothered with taking time to tie everything down.

I had a local trash hauler, metal collector scavenger type business man dump half a pick up load of unsecured metal car body parts in the street in front of my house. I took down the tag #, noted the vehicle particulars and phoned the police. They said if I couldn't I.D. the driver, there was nothing they could do. They wouldn't even send somebody out to move the rubbish off the street. I pulled it to the curb were it sat for two weeks until I got tired of seeing it and disposed of it myself.

Originally posted by Chris L
Around here there are actually laws about having unsecured loads (i.e. it's not supposed to happen). If it had been me, I would have recorded his # and paid a visit to my friendly local police officer. A person I know was behind a county owned truck full of gravel one time. The back bumper had several rocks scattered across it, that flew into our windshield when the truck went over a bump. License number was taken, trucker was talked to when caught up with at a traffic signal, cops were called, claim was filed with the county, nothing was done. It's damned hard to to prove negligence in some parts of this country and outrageously easy to fake it in other parts. :(

I friend of mine riding outside of Kennewick, Washington a couple of years ago almost got hit by a portable outhouse! Strong winds are normal for the area and he was on a county road when he was passed by a flatbed truck transporting the outhouses. Just as the truck was coming back into his lane, one of the outhouses flew off and barely missed my friend. He said that the only thing he could think about while the outhouse was flying at him was "if this thing hits me and kills me, it'd be the most embarrasing moment of my life - think of the newpaper headlines." Anyway, he swerved and missed it just in time. The truck never stopped, the outhouse was demolished, and my friend lived to tell the tale. It would have been the sh*ts if he'd been hit :D

Originally posted by greg360
A person I know was behind a county owned truck full of gravel one time. The back bumper had several rocks scattered across it, that flew into our windshield when the truck went over a bump. License number was taken, trucker was talked to when caught up with at a traffic signal, cops were called, claim was filed with the county, nothing was done. It's damned hard to to prove negligence in some parts of this country and outrageously easy to fake it in other parts. :(

Around here there would be no need to prove negligence. Simply having an uncovered/unsecured load will attract a fine, the same as any other traffic offence does.

I work for a trucking company and you would not believe the amount of calls we get from people who want to sue us. They think that because it came out from under the trucks tires that we are somehow responsible for it. Example: Irate woman calls saying that a piece of wood flew up and hit her car and we were legally responsible to pay. Truck was empty. Just pulling a cargo container chassis. The truck merely ran over and kicked up something that was already on the road. The woman was not happy at my attempts to politely reject her claim. She slammed the phone down uttering swear words and something about a lawyer. If it does not fall off the top or out of the back of the truck, you are S.O.L.. You are also S.O.L. if the truck kicks up a rock and the truck has legal mud flaps in place. It is just too funny how our drivers are supposed take an 80,000 truck, going 60 mph, and avoid every rock, pebble and piece of debris on the road.

On the bright side, I did pick up a nice new Snap-On wrench from the roadside the other day while riding.
A hundred yards later, another wrench in the next larger size.
Further on, another wrench.
I started looking around for some kinda mechanical Hansel & Gretel after a while, but nope that was all.
Sure do like my 3 matching wrenches though... :)