A classic case of what we call "Super F**ked-up S**t".

[Crossbow]

Let's see, what have I dodged on the road.... A chain link fence gate dropped at some unknown point, a metal pipe (8ft long and about 1 1/2 inches in diameter) dropped about 100 feet in front of me, a twin mattress and box spring, the plastic bed liner from a pickup truck, a truck tire (which bounced OVER my car, thankfully).... And I've been hit by two things flying: a pack of hamburger buns (who the hell transports 100 packages of hamburger buns in the open back end of a pickup?) and a brass elbow joint thrown from a truck about 10 car lengths ahead of me. That one hit my antenna and bounced away. Only damage was a bent antenna....

And my wife wonders why I'm anal about tying things down....

[pitmonkey]

Here in Washington you get a hefty fine for an unsecured load. There have been too many deaths and serious injuries from things flying out of trucks and in the middle of the road. There is even a # to call for reporting.

[Nashida]

There was one time my mom and I were driving somehwere in 290, and we had to skip our exit and take the next one and double back because there was a queen size mattress laying in the middle of the off ramp.

Okay, it was really leaning on the jersey barriers lining the exit, but still no safe way around the thing.

[Krivak]

I havent dodged as much stuff as you guys, though i did have some fun on the interstate. Im driving home from downtown, and i start seeing, one a time, small branches from what appears to be a pine tree. My thoughts were "Wait, what the....there's no sets of pine trees around here....." As i went further along, the branches started to get more numerous.

At that point, ahead of me, i see 3 cars all on their brakes, and trying to get into the next lane. Now i start to put it all together, but as i pull up, i see the culprit. There's this 80's dodge truck hauling what looks to be 10 pine trees in the back of his truck, all piled up, unsecured.

My exit is up next, and im praying that he doesnt take my exit when all of a sudden the biggest branch yet (must have been 5 feet long at least) falls off into the road. Lucky me, it swept to the side, and he took the exit like he didnt notice all the branches falling off. Meanwhile, im cursing my luck at having to stay behind this guy longer. So we get off, and this big ass log, yes, log, falls off. This sucker is larger than the biggest speedbump i have ever seen. AND It has branches on it too! It falls flat within my lane, right where my tires would have been. I just happened to swerve into the shoulder of the road (my car was ENTIRELY in the shoulder, thats how big the log was i had to run around). The car behind me swerved into the other lane. And the dude kept going! I was pissed. But i didnt die or get my car hurt, so i let it go

[mattm04]

I have seen a recliner, in pieces in on I-91 and narrowly missed a flying 4x4. That was scary.

[Dreamstalker]

One time, I saw a mattress strapped to the roof of a car with a single light-gauge cord side-to-side around its midpoint, and it was bent over nearly double by the force of the airstream.

We did as well...there were two mattresses, one tied to the roof with the aforementioned single rope, and the second tied to the first (not the roof) with what looked like packing twine (closer to the rear end). We got out from behind that idjit quick and forgot about him until a few miles later, when he was pulled over on the shoulder arguing with a cop.

[Jack7957]

Spotted yesterday on the way to work, an entire exhaust system, pipes, cat, muffler. It was in the right lane of a 3 lane highway, so people could get around it if they noticed it in time.

[Mamadrae]

I thankfully have only had 1 thing come flying at me. Thankfully it wasn't anything material but it still scared the hell out of me. It was a giant chunk of ice that came flying off this guy's roof. It was freezing outside though and I thought for sure it was going to shatter my windshield. Thankfully my windshield won the fight.

Hubby however has the most frightful flying object story I have ever heard. He was on the road for work and was behind a semi hauling big pipes that he thinks were made of concrete (might be wrong on that since it was about 5 years ago).

Apparently one of the lines was not secure enough and suddenly hubby had one of these things rolling at him to smash his car! He says he's not sure how he managed not to suddenly lose bodily functions and even more unsure how he managed not to get hit but he managed.

Now if we could have that luck with the deer in the area. I have to avoid those more then flying objects from trucks and such.

[Ironclad Alibi]

The scariest situation like these I have heard about happened around 1981. The pins holding the rear truck axle assembly onto a semi trailer somehow failed and the rear truck axle assembly slid out from under the trailer. When this happened the air brake lines broke, and since the air pressure keeps the brakes off, the brakes immediately came on and the rear truck axle assembly stopped dead in the road. The car behind the truck smashed into the rear truck axle assembly. This happened at interstate speeds. Ouch.

[Chromatix]

My dad used to drive a *tiny* Seat Terra van. Think of the smallest car you can - no, not the Mini or the Peel 50 - and then turn it into a van. It ran on a 1-litre diesel engine.

Once, he used it to get a bunch of rather bulky lab equipment from the English university where he was based, to the German facility where the big experiments were run. So, you have a half-ton load in the back of this tiny van, on the Autobahn.

No, the lab equipment didn't fall out of the back.

He saw other cars suddenly changing lane ahead of him. Being in the wrong-handed vehicle for German traffic, he couldn't safely change lanes so quickly... so he came upon the block of wood that everyone else was busy avoiding.

He tells me that the front of the van was thrown up over the wood - which was fine - but the overloaded back end stayed right where it was, blowing both of the rear tyres.

Needless to say, there was a slight delay in getting the equipment to the lab...

[Chromatix]

I just spotted this one in the news:

[XCashier]

a brass elbow joint thrown from a truck about 10 car lengths ahead of me. That one hit my antenna and bounced away. Only damage was a bent antenna....

You're lucky. I was driving down I-10 in Arizona where it's 75 MPH. The big rig ahead of me kicked up a three-foot long piece of steel. Much faster than it takes to tell, it hit my pickup, tore up the hood and bonnet, destroyed the left wiper, smashed the windshield, went through the steering wheel and stopped about five inches from impaling me.

Literally, I saw it in the sky one second and was hit with it the next. No reaction time whatsoever.

We went to an auto glass repair place in Casa Grande, where it was identified as the mud flap bracket from a big truck. The auto repair guys, the insurance man, and everyone we showed the bracket to and told about the accident were amazed that we'd survived, and said that God had been watching out for us.

I still flinch if I see a bit of debris flying towards me...

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Mom and I saw not one, but two stuffed teddy bears lying in the middle of Wendover Avenue (erm, Wendover Speedway to be more precise) last week while we were on our way to High Point for a pastry run.

Those poor bears . . . if it weren't for the insane amount of traffic flying past us during the 4:00 rush on a Monday, I'd have made Mom stop the car and I would have tried to rescue them.

But then, we've been known to stop, throw on the hazard lights and get out to rescue stranded animals before.

[Jay 2K Winger]

One of the first times I was taking my friend Sean up to Philly to see a Ring of Honor wrestling show, he was talking about a wrestling gimmick he'd thought up (since he has plans on training to be a wrestler), a rather ... controversial gimmick he called 'Tragedies Through Time' or 'The Atrocity,' and would involve wearing Nazi outfits or trenchcoats like the Columbine shooters, all while I'm trying to convince him this was a very bad idea.

While driving, however, there was a pickup towing a small trailer, clearly home made with plywood or something. Well, the lid of this trailer wasn't very securely fastened down, as I could see it vibrating. More to the point, the hinge-point of the lid was at the BACK, so the wind was trying to rip it off.

Which is what happened.

Now, I'd seen this was going to happen and was giving it plenty of room, and still had to swerve briefly onto the shoulder to avoid it smashing into my car. I get back on the road, go around the guy, and Sean-- who'd gone silent when I went into Accident Avoidance mode-- then looks skyward and says, "Okay, God, I get the message. Bad gimmick, consider it dropped."

[Crossbow]

You're lucky. I was driving down I-10 in Arizona where it's 75 MPH. The big rig ahead of me kicked up a three-foot long piece of steel. Much faster than it takes to tell, it hit my pickup, tore up the hood and bonnet, destroyed the left wiper, smashed the windshield, went through the steering wheel and stopped about five inches from impaling me.

Literally, I saw it in the sky one second and was hit with it the next. No reaction time whatsoever.

We went to an auto glass repair place in Casa Grande, where it was identified as the mud flap bracket from a big truck. The auto repair guys, the insurance man, and everyone we showed the bracket to and told about the accident were amazed that we'd survived, and said that God had been watching out for us.

I still flinch if I see a bit of debris flying towards me...

Trust me, so do I. The elbow joint was not more than about 2 inches long, but I know it would have gone through the windshield, had it hit.

And you were considerably luckier than I was. Glad you're ok.