Today I became a victim of some twat who doesn't understand the concept of maintaining their car. As I was following this car through the round-about its back-box fell off and with no where to go with a car on the outside... I ended up going over the top of it. Luckily I managed to brake fairly hard but it caught the clamp holding my down-pipe and ripped the exhaust out. Even though I never drove much further, only enough to get me on the pavement it bent the down-pipe so that it was grounding out and interfering with the gear linkage so I couldn't change gears. Has marked the sump as well.

Had to use the jack to bend the exhaust up and then a bit of creativity with a rope up into the engine bay where we tied it up to a engine mount. At least let me limp to a garage.

Cost me £70 all in, all cause someone was driving their car in a state not fit for the road. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out your exhaust is corroded to hell and needs replaced .

Anyone else been the victim of debris left by fellow motorists?

I hit another car once but nothing fell off it until after the impact No ok seriously, other than a cone laying in the road during some roadworks and other motorists making it very hard for me to stop (the guy behind didnt understand I was stopping as he couldnt see why) i've not had any debris per se... but I did cause some once:

I was a passenger in my cousins car on our way to drop her car off to her dads to be fixed up for it's MOT. On route we get this knocking sound, so we get out and I check the wheel she just had put on at a tyre depot, it looked ok so we carried on. The knocking got worse, so I said ok pull over i'm going to take it off and put it back on again... "we're almost there" she said as we went around a large roundabout...

Unfortunately the wheel decided to take the exit before the one we intended, leaving us driving on the brake disc! The car ground to a halt (with sparks i'm glad to say) and left a nice gash in the road, as we watched our wheel bounce merrily and neatly down the middle of the exit road, we where stranded on the inside of a 2 lane roundabout in Clacton.

We had to get the police to stop the traffic and give us room to work to put the wheel back on, which I managed to get it tight enough to get us the rest of the way.

It was perhaps the most surreal thing to ever happen to me on the roads.

If you have the reg no of the offending exhaustless car, report it to plod.
Pointless contacting your insurance co. and having a claim on file though.

Funny you should mention the wheel falling off Becky.
On the way back from the Karting meet I was following a guy towing a boat on a trailer onto the sliproad for the A19. At almost exactly the same time Mackie and me noticed the wobbly wheel, then it fell off and attempted to join the dual carriageway on its own.

A piece of metal fell off the back of a scrap lorry in one of my driving lessons, which I couldn't avoid running over, it damaged the nearside front and blew out the rear tyre.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Unfortunately the wheel decided to take the exit before the one we intended

Done that before as well, though we lost 8 in one go, that had decided to make a bid for freedom from their tyre trolley (had been loaded the wrong way round) smashing open the side door and bouncing away

The kinda debris which annoys me, is glass which is swept into the blooming cycle lanes. The way i go, theres alot of traffic, so when im going on the cycle lane, thers no chance for me to stop/swerve, because its clear, its hard to see aswell, making it even more annoying.

Quote from keiran :

Today I became a victim of some twat who doesn't understand the concept of maintaining their car. As I was following this car through the round-about its back-box fell off and with no where to go with a car on the outside... I ended up going over the top of it. Luckily I managed to brake fairly hard but it caught the clamp holding my down-pipe and ripped the exhaust out. Even though I never drove much further, only enough to get me on the pavement it bent the down-pipe so that it was grounding out and interfering with the gear linkage so I couldn't change gears. Has marked the sump as well.

Had to use the jack to bend the exhaust up and then a bit of creativity with a rope up into the engine bay where we tied it up to a engine mount. At least let me limp to a garage.

Cost me £70 all in, all cause someone was driving their car in a state not fit for the road. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out your exhaust is corroded to hell and needs replaced .

Anyone else been the victim of debris left by fellow motorists?

That sucks mate, maybe if you got the registration of the other car, you could somehow claim it? =/

As for a situation, was on the back of my Dads bike one time and some douchebag Lorry driver thought it'd be a good idea for huge lumps of hay to come flying off of his lorry.. GG.

The car in front of me lost some rather small piece of plastic at about 160km/h (about 100mph) on the autobahn. Caused minor scratches on the front bumper which I am not that happy about.

Nah I never got the registration, was to busy trying to get myself into the left lane and as far onto the pavement as possible.

Just makes you think afterwards, when you see the state of some peoples cars and they don't appear to give a dam. Can't see them being to pleased if they struck something falling off another car!

By the time I went up the road to pick it up (just in case it was a fancy `boy racer` back box) it was gone. I reckon the guy probably went straight back and picked it up after seeing what happened.

Saw a school but run over an entire exhaust system. Kinda funny because the bus driver didnt even stop to see what she had hit (there is an odd curb to get into the parking lot of my school that causes cars to scrapes if you dont go slow enough). I almost hit a family of opossums the other morning when I was riding my bike to school, but I'm not so sure that counts. . .

The route that my dad drives to get to the hospital where he works follows a road that goes down a steep hill around a blind corner. Once when he was going to work there was a car that had rolled into the middle of the road because some idiot forgot the parking brake.

I've never hit or driven over debris from another car. I have had to, or have accidentally, driven over other non-vehicle debris from an accident.

My headlights absolutely suck. A 1996 Nissan Altima headlights are the worst designed headlights I've ever encountered. They cut off very abruptly and there can be something directly in the middle of the road ahead and you won't know until it is too late when driving 65 mph down the highway. Something in the middle of the road like a dead deer! Quite a large dead deer!

It was a fresh hit. The car that hit it was pulled off the road a couple hundred feet down the road. I never saw it until it was too late to do anything. Up over the deer I went in my little Altima. No damage, but boy did my car stink for quite some time afterwards. I couldn't get the underneath cleaned for anything. Shreds of deer meat was hanging from everywhere and every little bolt, clamp, and crevis of the exhaust system.

Quote from speed1 :

I almost hit a family of opossums the other morning when I was riding my bike to school, but I'm not so sure that counts. . .

I had a bird fly into the spokes of the front wheel of my bike a few years ago. It went round 4 or 5 times before it came out again, and there were all feathers stuck in the spokes afterwards. No idea if it survived.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I had a bird fly into the spokes of the front wheel of my bike a few years ago. It went round 4 or 5 times before it came out again, and there were all feathers stuck in the spokes afterwards. No idea if it survived.

pffft.... Only counts if you are hit in the face, and it's on a motorcycle, not a pedal bike, and it's approximately at the moment you are shifting from 2nd to 3rd (maybe 3rd to 4th...) at 60+ mph

Glad I wasn't one of the stupid who quit wearing their full face helmets when the helmet law was revoked...

I drove over a back box on my way to university a couple of months back, because some idiot had seemingly just left it in the middle of a country road. Luckily it didn't even touch the bottom of the Fiesta I had at the time.

That's twice I see "back box" here. What the heck is "back box"?

Quote from mrodgers :

That's twice I see "back box" here. What the heck is "back box"?

Erm...Muffler ?

Bit of exhaust system that has the tailpipe attached, normally connects at the other end to a centre pipe with a catalytic converter in it.

Quote from Bean0 :

Erm...Muffler ?

Bit of exhaust system that has the tailpipe attached, normally connects at the other end to a centre pipe with a catalytic converter in it.

Yes I see that now. It was quite difficult to google. Google kept telling me I meant "black box"

I guess you English folks don't know geometry. I've yet to see a muffler in the shape of a box. And you guys flame us Americans?

We left debris in Austria.

We had this folding caravan and after some hundred km, the left suspension of the caravan broke. Wheel fell off (between the guard rails without touching a car, so that was pretty neat), but we did leave some 'Jeu de boule' balls.
I can still remember me sitting in the grass..

Quote from mrodgers :

Yes I see that now. It was quite difficult to google. Google kept telling me I meant "black box"

'Cause you ride on time, 'cause you ride on time, ride on time... I could go on.

See, to me this is a back box... But I don't drive a car. Whereas you're all talking about a muffler.

I've been hit by cigarettes and windshield spray too many times to count on my bike. :gnasher:

Though I've missed all the bouncing beer cans and what not.

Does a rather large crow that had bounced off the windscreen of the car infront at 90mph count?

Wasn't a pretty sight.

Quote from pb32000 :

'Cause you ride on time, 'cause you ride on time, ride on time... I could go on.

You're making no sense to me...

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2sjAnu_5ek

a customer of ours once arrived home with his twin axle horsebox and discovered it was now a single axle unit, the other having fallen (?) off on the local dual carriage way at 2 am.

he got the horse out and then went back, found the axle in the central reservation so stopped in the outside lane !, let down the ramp of the horsebox and put his axle in before driving back home.

how the hell he could not noice the axle falling off or feel any difference whilst driving another 15 miles with the rearmost axle missing and a full grown horse in it is a mystery to me though i assume the horse probably did notice.


p.s. he was a policeman

My car is a crap heap... Its French though; its meant to decay elegantly.