I wish the average Houston pickup truck driver would learn to like vans instead. It would create a lot less road debris. The Houston roads are constantly coated in shit that people can't seem to keep in their trucks.
So last Saturday, I load up the family and start driving to Louisiana to hand my daughter off to my parents for a week in the summer time visit. We crest a hill on Hwy 59 all of the sudden just past the crest of the hill there's road debris, during the split second I saw it I couldn't really identify it, it looked like it could have been an electric motor or some sort of pump or something car part wise. I thought it would be small enough that the van would clear it - since obviously it's Houston and you can't swerve without side-swiping someone and I didn't really have enough distance to stomp the brakes either.
Whack!
We lost oil pressure nearly immediately. I pulled over to the left side (there was barrier all the way to the stripe on the right) and killed the engine. There was now a huge puddle of gasoline under the van. Yep, that's right, I filled up the tank the evening before at Costco and the van was parked in between, I lost a full tank - plenty of surface area to ignite. I got my daughter to help me push the van a little so we wouldn't be parked over the puddle and just prayed no one tossed a cigarette butt our direction.
When I looked behind us, there was another disabled vehicle. While we were standing there a third disabled vehicle pulled over on the right-hand side of the road. The police that showed up for the accident report told me he knew of five vehicles taken out by this one piece of crap. I'm not sure it stopped there.
The road debris thing around here is serious. I don't know if people are just too stupid to tie knots or don't care. A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were driving along and had to change lanes because there was a whole bicycle laying the freeway. Mattresses, chairs, ladders, random clothing, lumber, it's like people flat don't understand the physics involved with crap being in the backs of their trucks.
How low is the collective I.Q. of this area that wind-speed, vacuum areas and that fact drawers in that dresser are likely to come open if you don't do something to tape them shut when you point them out the side of your pickup?
Once we got a rental and were heading back home we came up on a Chevy truck with carpet and padding rolled up and stacked high in the back. A roll of carpet was coming undone and unspooling onto the freeway like a roll of toilet paper dangling out a window in the wind on a spoon handle. I said to my wife "crap like that's what happened to our van".
Back before KLOL was conquered by Mexico they used to have a little segment they did in the morning "What's on the freeway!" Callers would call in and report things they saw on the freeway and where they saw them. I heard toilets, kitchen sinks, dressers, whole couches, everything.
The "there ought to be a law" thing is really creeping up and challenging my libertarian beliefs at the moment when it comes to freeways and pickups in general now. Perhaps there should be an I.Q. test before you can buy a pickup? Maybe a knot-test? Perhaps they should come with some old Boy Scout manuals with knot tying in them?!
