Earlier this month I was riding one of my normal routes through a nice, straight, although a bit industrial section when I had a flat on my rear wheel. When I went to change it I noticed that the tire was slashed, not punctured. With some good luck and a boot I improvised I was able to make it home.

Today, same road, same place, same flat with a slashed tire. This time I was't so lucky and the tube blew out the boott as soon as I hit it with my CO2 cartridge. Fortunately I had a friend who agreed to come pick me up. As I waited I walked up the road a little bit to see if I could find out what the jinx was. I found that a couple of ceramic floor tiles had somehow been shattered across the road leaving lots and lots of pieces with sharp edges. I spent about ten minutes picking up pieces and throwing them off the road. Too bad I didn't do it after my first flat. From now on I'm going to make a least a cursory attempt to find out what caused my flat.

I'm pretty good at spotting glass, either before I run over it, more likely as I'm running over it

I've thought about once a week bringing a broom along on my main commute routes and just sweeping off all the glass. As it is, I try to memorize some of the bad spots, and over a few months, the glass tends to get knocked off the road anyway.

If I'm walking, I'll tend to pick up screws and nails off of the road, but have gotten lazy when I pass riding my bike, unless it is really bad.

Last year I was cruising along and saw a bunch of really big staples in the road. I decided to stop and pick them up. A local tire shop also came over to sweep them up (so much for soliciting more business). 2x2 lane road, people could get around. But, we got most of them cleared off in less than a minute. There was one person waiting in the car (not helping) that rudely complained that we were wasting his time.... A flat would have been better for him

I couple of popular bike routes west of my place are often littered with so much broken glass and construction debris it isn't practical to sweep up. It needs a proper street sweeping machine.

Two segments are near some roadhouses and stripper clubs. The biker bar isn't the problem -- bikers know better than to litter their own roads with busted beer bottles. But rednecks in pickups don't care. Especially near the stripper bars. They leave liquored up and p'd off at the world, smashing glass everywhere because it hasn't yet occurred to them that getting liquored up and p'd off at stripper bars is counterproductive and you never go home with the girl.

The construction debris is an ongoing thing. Won't stop anytime soon. This formerly quiet rural area and farm to market road now passes a huge and expensive housing development project, probably just one of many to come. In 5-10 years that route won't be safe for bicycling anymore. For now, we just cope with the debris and consider it the future good ol' days.

I adopted two narrow rural bridges that I cross several times a week that are frequently littered w/ construction debris forcing cyclists into the lane of traffic. As necessary I'll park my truck in a pull-off, don a yellow reflective cycling vest and leather gloves, take a stiff broom and clear off what the county ignores for many weeks at a time. It's a self-serving public service.

-Bandera

My city is very good at keeping the streets swept as well as the area near the curb, but this past summer and fall there would be broken glass on bike paths and other areas where it would be known that bikes ride, like in a tunnel under a highway and it seems to be maliciously placed there.
This was particularly true of the tunnel under the highway where at one end when you enter it curves off the street and then there is a slope. I came from the opposite way pulling my trailer when I say a guy with a bike who had a broom and was cleaning up glass that covered the riding path. It wasn't a broken bottle but glass that somebody broke up into smaller pieces and had dumped on the path. That was malicious.
I have swept up glass under a bridge that has a path connecting a park and a boat landing area near my home that I ride just to keep off the busy street. It has the same deal where on one side you blindly come down an incline on a curve and you would be in glass before you even realized it was there unless you approached carefully.

i've driven back and swept glass off of my regular routes, as well as taken my chain saw and cleared a couple of fallen and leaning trees

Respect.

We have an army of street cleaners that do this in Shanghai.

I usually take whatever has caused my flat and either save it, or throw it in the trash.

The worst debris I have ever encountered was a folded up box cutter blade that sliced my tire from bead to bead.

Trash is not a big issue on the roads and MPT as they do a good job cleaning them in my immediate area. I have stuck pruning shears or saw in my bag to get some annoying branches and such.

I have considered taking ant bait with me to sprinkle around the fire ant hills along the MPT. But thinking that someone might not like the cruelty to another living thing or the use of insecticide prevents me at the moment.

Bring a wisk broom. sweep the glass to the curb.

My last flat was in May at about 11 pm - I hit a very narrow, deep pothole - only a little wider than my tire, maybe 3 inches wide, by about 8 inches long and 3-4 inches deep. It was a crack at the asphalt on a subdivision street that had, by the looks of it in the daylight on a subsequent ride, been repaired the previous summer but heaved again with the winter freeze-thaw cycle.

The problem with bad roads here is ubiquitous- it would probably take Jeff Bezos’ Amazon fortune to really fix them all.

There was a man in a city I used to live in who rode around with a broom sticking up out of his rear basket. He would stop anywhere he saw road debris that could cause a flat on a bike and sweep it away. I always thought that was mighty nice of him.

Years later, and I now live in a city that refuses to design bike paths to not fill with mud at every underpass. Somewhere there's some young folks who think it's nice of that old couple to go out and clear the slick mud off the bike path underpasses.

I gave up tubular tires shortly after moving to north coastal San Diego County and discovering goathead thorns. We have had abatement and cleanup efforts for several years, but the plants grow like weeds (so to speak).

When I bought the Capo Sieger several years ago, the front tubular tire was already flat, and as I walked it home from the train station, I suddenly heard the telltale sound of the rear tire being punctured by a goathead.