November 26, 2019 • 25 mins
What is a road stove? From car parts like tires, and headlight glass, to fluids such as oil and coolant, and yes, even household appliances, it all can become road debris. Listen in as the CarStuff crew discuss some memorable road debris stories, and just how our roadways keep from becoming landfills.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Welcome to another episode of Car Stuff. Everyone.
I am Kurt Garren and I'm here today with Ben Bowling.
How are you doing today? Ben always always do it
well man, as long as they keep the rubber on
the road. How are you doing, Hurt? I mean that's
good to hear. The same same as we start our
(00:22):
show today. It's always a good reminder to all of
us drivers out there that operating a vehicle on the
roadway should be undertaken with a certain level of responsibility
to you, your passenger, as well as your fellow human
being that you're sharing the roadway. We are all trying
to get somewhere important. We all have the same amount
of time in our day, been true, and we are
(00:42):
usually all in a hurry to get to where we're going.
Everyone out there listening, be excellent to each other. As
Bill s Preston Esquire said, And if you're thinking about
hauling something today, be sure to tie that down for everyone.
That's right. Look, if you don't have the time to
tie down that thing you're hauling, then you don't have
(01:05):
the time to drive to the place that you're taking
it to You know what I mean. I do a
lot of inappropriate hauling. I mean, I tie things down
best I can. You know what I mean, six ways
to Sunday or whatever. But the most important thing to
remember is that spending a little bit of extra time
at the front of these kind of missions or events
(01:29):
saves you so much potential headache down the road. You
were telling me off air one of You're telling me
a very strange road debris war story, and at first
I didn't believe it, and I have to say it
cracks me up because you're okay, that's right, Ben. I
was driving down I twenty one day and I saw
(01:54):
laying in the road ahead of me arrange oven that
I assume had fallen off of someone's truck, but I
guess just slid out of the back. So it's got
the four burners, the four stove burners on the top.
It's got an oven that you open up right, the
whole thing just sitting there. This blows my mind, though, Man,
you saw a road stove. I don't know whether these
(02:15):
are common enough that they can earn that name, but
we're calling it here on car stuff, uh, road stoves.
So it's strange. I do mention that it's funny because
it seems so incongruous. It seems just so out there
and unexpected, and most importantly, as far as we know,
no one was hurt. But my question is about the
(02:36):
driver hauling that that stove before it was a road stove.
Where were they going, what were they doing? What is
their life like such that they drop a stove in
the middle of the interstate and go, You know, things happen.
I mean her, I got places to be. I'll just
tell him the stove didn't make it. You would think
(02:58):
wherever that place was, they would need the stove with them,
But I don't know. I mean, I thought about it
after it happened, and I was surprised that I didn't
see anyone at least stopped on the shoulder. I would
like to think that they knew that it fell out,
But then again have a hard time wrapping my head
around that logic of why you don't stop. So I'm
(03:19):
with you, man, I don't I don't understand. There is
one thing, though, is speculating about, and I want of
your opinion on this, Although it is a little bit depressing.
Do you think that people who just dropped stuff in
the interstate like that, or it falls off the back
of their vehicle, whether it's a stove, washing machine, anything,
you know, like uh that on that order of weight
(03:42):
or mass. Do you think when people drop that stuff
they hesitate to pick it up because they're scared of liability?
Possibly I would be scared to pick it of course
that well, that would never happen to me. I just
want to because I tied stuff down. This person may
have thought about pulling over. Then they were a skeptical
about running out into the street to get the oven,
(04:03):
because first of all, if you make it to the
to the range, how are you going to then move
that from where it sits off of the road. So,
I mean, that's that's one of those things that you
have to grapple with. Is it worth my life to
go out there and try to get this stove off
the road, which I'm probably going to fail at anyway,
because I couldn't even tie it down in the first place. Yes,
Do you just like settle in while you got the
(04:25):
stove there? You just set up like a sink, maybe
a microwave, grigerator, just start living. That is an extreme
story of road debris. And what we found is that
road debris isn't just the result of car accidents and
can come from a number of situations, but it has
a huge impact on roadway safety. And the definition is
(04:51):
by necessity broad. How how does Uncle Sam define road debris?
They define the road debris or he defines road debris
as any object that would be in the road that's
not supposed to be there, and they refer to them
as non fixed hazards. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
said in two thousand eleven that more than eight hundred
(05:13):
people were killed by such non fixed hazards. Fairly dark statistic,
but it does put it into perspective kind of how
this seemingly lighthearted subject can have the serious effect on
other people out there. And that is sobering statistic, but
that is just addressing fatality. Still, more than eight hundred people,
(05:36):
it's unbelievable. How many accidents are we talking here? This
statistic here is according to the Triple A Foundation for
Traffic Safety. They did the study in two thousand four
that found that twenty five thousand accidents occurred because of
road debris. That seems like a very high number, but
we also have to realize there are millions of cars,
(05:58):
you know what I mean here in our fair metropolis
of Atlanta. There was a weird thing that was happening
by my house in my neighborhood, probably about six months
ago or so. This was a surface streep, a busy street,
but still a surface street, and I'd be walking down
the street and I started noticing this pile of hub
(06:21):
caps of like you know, the plastic hub caps that
are so common nowadays. Uh, And I wonder what it was.
At first, I swear man, I thought it was some
kind of art thing, and I thought, Okay, somebody's being artistic.
I guess, you know, this is like their creative voice
or whatever. It's not for me, but there you go.
(06:43):
So I didn't mess with the hub caps anything like
that until my girlfriend and I were walking gosh too
to the local pizza place or something. As we were walking,
I heard up weird noise behind me, and uh, and
it turned around and there was this plastic hub cap
(07:05):
cover that it was like flown off because there was
a pothole that I wasn't noticing. I'm not sure whether
it was like the pothole or the curb or some
combination thereof, but apparently for for more than a week,
people have been driving on this and you know, going
at a pretty high rate of speed for the size
of the road, and they have been hitting this unexpected
(07:28):
pothole and losing I guess the front right hubcap or
something to it. And then now, of course the hub
caps weren't all neatly falling in a pile. Somebody was
taking them and moving them to that pile. I don't
know who who was doing it. Maybe it was like
the security guard or the landscaping person at the local
(07:50):
bank or something, just trying to keep the driveway clean.
But it hit me that every one of those hub caps,
and there were easily more than fifteen, every one of
them was a piece of road debris generated by people
going too fast and hitting this unexpected pothole and was
really messing up people's cars. Eventually, someone gave it the
(08:15):
old Atlanta pavement fix, which is, instead of fixing the pothole,
you take a metal plate, like we mentioned the previous episode.
They just slap that on there, so now it has
that metal plate, and it got me thinking all the
weird road debris. Thankfully, it's not as dangerous as a
road stove, be at hub caps or glass or any
(08:36):
type of road debris, there's clean up involved, and so
the question then arises who picks it up, because if
no one picked it up, there would be just trash everywhere.
So obviously there's someone dedicated to this gigantic task. In
an accident situation, generally the clean up would fall upon
the tow truck driver the to clean up the minor
(08:58):
debris that they can fit on their truck. Or you'll
see a bumper, yeah, hanging out of the window of
the damaged car on the rear of the toad truck.
They might toss the side mirror in there or something
like that. And that clean up, though, is part of
the charge that people incur when they get a vehicle
toad other things like stoves. Maybe that would fall on
the d O T maintenance screws road stove for some reason.
(09:22):
Do you remember that song Convoy? I'll play it for
you later Convolation by C. W. McCall. We won't play
it on air. Long time listeners know what this song
is about. It's a great song about a great road trip.
But now instead of the lyrics, plain in my head
as convoy. It's going roads though, I gotta send this
(09:42):
to you. I you know what. I'm sorry because I
know this makes no sense to you, but I guarantee
you when you see the when you see the video,
it'll make sense. Can connect the dots then and connect
the dots, And just to manage some expectations here, man,
I want you to know going into it that the
Joe is not worth it. It's not a good joke
that I just made, but it's a great song. So
(10:15):
the tow truck driver has to handle cleaning up an
accident oftentime. And while these tow truck professionals are doing this,
they're often also having to deal with someone who is
having a terrible day. Someone who've just gotten an accident,
is maybe in shock, is definitely irritated because who wants
(10:38):
to deal with insurance and is a little adult. They're
happy to be alive, right, hopefully they're not injured. It's
easy for people. I know it sounds silly when we say, oh,
there was a accident on the road, someone left their bumper.
Who forgets their bumper? But when you are so grateful
not to be dead, that sort of can wombs The
(11:00):
majority of your attention span, and it's very easy to
just realize days or even weeks later that you left
hub caps or tire or a bumper. Who took care
of that, you know what I mean. It's all a blur. Yeah,
that's even if you think of it at all. Absolutely So,
speaking of professionals, let's talk a little bit about what
(11:24):
happens when it goes beyond the tow truck driver. Because
the tow truck driver, just be clear, they're not going
to be driving around in their non towing hours just
picking up trash and debris from the roadside. They only
do that when they're towing a car. Generally, the tow
truck driver will have the capacity to clean up minor
(11:47):
fuel spills. They have material that they can pour on
the road that absorbs oil gas, that sort of thing,
and then they can sweep that up and have it
contained and dispose of it properly. For larger bills, perhaps
there will be a has matt professionals coming in to
clean up their companies that do that sort of thing
out there as well. And unfortunately, sometimes it's not just
(12:10):
vehicle debris that is left behind after an accident. Sometimes
there's medical type waste left behind as well. So back
to the darker side. When paramedics and firefighters are trying
to save a life at the scene of an accident,
they're not typically concerned about what they leave behind at
the scene, So someone must pick that up as well,
and that team of people is going to be the
(12:31):
good folks at the d O T. So whenever you
see these these folks cleaning up after the scene of
an accident, drive carefully, give them some give them a
wide berth, give him respect because they are doing a
job that is often as unpleasant as it is necessary
(12:51):
and crucial. Right. It's weird because one of the things
we didn't talk about when we've been kicking around the
idea of road debris was the concept of road kill. Right,
And you and I have seen a lot of road
kill in our time. I say that authoritatively, but we've
driven through rural Georgia, you know what I mean. So
(13:12):
you'll see dear, you'll see crow, you'll see possums, raccoons
and so on. There's an interesting distinction in the way
that some municipalities and communities approach it. There's a public
information officer named Ronnie Edis who was talking to Rick Davis,
a journalist for The Press Enterprise, about who is responsible
(13:33):
for car debris and road clean up, and he said,
if a dead animal on a road for which we're
responsible for the maintenance of is a cat, dog or
some other domestic animal, our departments operations staff will come
out and pick it up and haul it away. But
if the animal is a possum or some other wild creature,
(13:54):
we do not pick up those interesting distinctions. I would
love to get more details on this. I'm wondering if
maybe it's a conservation thing, like wild animals die, so
you want, uh, you know, when they die, their food
for other wild animals, buzzard. Yeah, let the buzzards get it,
or you know, other scavenging creatures. But to be clear,
(14:18):
that's entirely speculative. I don't know why. I just imagine
that that's the case. So that goes to show that
people working for DT, people working for maintenance, they don't
just clean up the remnants of car accidents. They also
have to clean up road kill. They'll also need to
handle debris that has nothing to do with an accident
(14:39):
but could cause one, like a downed tree. Well, roadkill
can cause an accident. I've seen people swerving around carcasses before,
so I mean they can be dangerous as well. Do
you remember the time when the cows got loose on
the interstate Oh okay, this one is okay because some
of the cows survived, right, Yeah. Yeah, the truck that
(15:00):
was carrying them may have been involved in some sort
of an accident that caused the cows to escape. This
was early in the morning, so before the morning rush hour,
so there was an operation to wrangle all of the
cows up. So they had to call in some I
guess cowboys to come in, and they ended up getting
most of them. They were able to get the last one,
(15:21):
I believe during the evening rush hours. I mean, this
was an all day event. I just liked the idea
of these uh, these guys hanging out, you know, maybe
they have maybe they have a station the way that
firefighters do. Well, I guess it would be a ranch.
They're hanging out and then one of them gets the call.
They're like, all right, boys, saddle up is what we've
(15:43):
been training for. You know. I'm sure they loved it. Yeah. Yeah,
we've had a couple of animal escapes like that. I
(16:04):
remember a while back. I believe it was in Atlanta.
There was a zebra on the loose, and I learned
about it during rush hour, and briefly I thought, you know,
can I make it over there in time to see
the zebra before they catch the poor guy? But I
had I had gotten the information wrong, and there's no
(16:24):
way I was going to make it I have. I
don't know if this even counts. Is debris have a
catastrophic road debris story. The Hubcap one was the fun one.
But this, this road debris story, is something that I
am sure affected both of us to some degree. And
it is the day in Atlanta that the road itself
(16:47):
became debris. That's right, folks. A few years back, for
some reason, there's a sketchy story behind us. For some reason,
few years back, part of Interstate eighty five, which is
a crucial artery through the city, just collapsed. Part of
the interstate that was built on a bridge dropped, literally
(17:08):
just dropped to the ground under the most sketchy of circumstances.
We can talk about this in a lighthearted manner because
somehow no one was injured. I can't believe it. That's amazing,
is amazing. So it just it dropped. And the official
story was that there were three people who were sleeping
(17:28):
rough living outdoors, and they were under this bridge and
they had started a fire, and the fire grew out
of control, and the fire, fueled by the stuff it
consumed under the bridge, led to the collapse of the road.
It kind of looked like a fiber optic cable of
some sort, something like that. It's the orange stuff that
(17:50):
you sometimes he sticking out of the ground waiting to
be buried, and so it's gigantic rolls of plastic pipe
apparently burns very hot, hot enough to collapse a concrete bridge.
Another thing this unrelated to road. Another thing that was
fascinating was a lot of conspiracy theories proliferated and people
were saying, well, the official story doesn't quite add up,
(18:13):
which I agree with. There's some pretty major plot holes there. Um,
And they would say the official story doesn't add up.
You know what really happened. They did this cover up
because they didn't want people to know what was really
going on. You gotta love how there's always a they
in these sorts of stories. Some of the theories I
(18:33):
heard were that some faction of the local government was
smuggling something or how to corrupt what they were either
smuggling something illicit, and they decided the best way to
keep it out of the news was to cut lapse.
A bridge doesn't check out. And then the other thing
was the idea that there was some corruption or city
(18:55):
funding scandal and that people were making gonna make a
lot of money off repairing the bridge. I don't think
there was some vast insidious conspiracy to collapse a bridge
because well why, I mean, it made national news. How
often does a major interstate catch fire and collapse? It's
(19:17):
not every day you see it. But hey, you know
who knows what goes on out there? You know, just
just the people under the bridge, like like that is that?
Isn't there a red Hot Chili Pepper song about that?
And so we see the story of road debris has
several unsung heroes. There are towing professionals involved, there are
(19:39):
d ot workers involved, also professional. Of course, there are
occasionally cowboys involved. But if we're looking at the unsung
heroes of road debris, we have to mention one of
the most important people in the entire equation, and that
is you speci Typically, you listening now, no, not that person. You.
(20:04):
Of course, if you have a minor accident, say you're
bumped the tree, or you back into your mailbox, yeah,
or a barrier at a parking deck or something, yeah,
simply pick up after yourself. Tie down your oven, Tie
down your oven. If you've learned one thing, don't be
a part of the road stove epidemic eating this nation's
(20:25):
inner states alive. Only you can prevent road stoves. It's true, though,
you should try to make not to be two boy
scout about it, but you should try to leave the
scene of an accident better than it was when you
found it, if at all possible. Because if you don't
like the idea of you cleaning up for your own sake,
(20:48):
just think of the fact that you could be potentially
saving the lives or ensuring the safety of people that
you may never meet. You know what I mean. It's
for the driver who comes behind you and the driver
roho comes after you. And you still need to use
common sense when it comes to road debris, whether it's
(21:10):
a washing machine, road stove, what have you, and take
a few extra minutes to check your ties and make
sure that you're not going to have something flying off
in the middle road. You know what we should mention
some of the other common ones. Ladders, I said, a
lot of ladders from construction trucks. Uh, mattresses. Sometimes people
(21:31):
just I think what it is is they don't realize
how swiftly a mattress can come become airborne at high speeds.
This was fascinating to me, Kurt, because I honestly had
never thought about it, And now I have a new
founder appreciation for the people who come and clean up
the road, because if they weren't there, the roads wouldn't
be drivable. Think about how much stuff just adds up
(21:52):
on a given day. Think of the hub caps, just
the pile of hub caps a low Maybe we have
to do another sell. And where where all this stuff goes? Yeah,
junk yards, salvage yards, whatever, I would assume. Okay, so
I would assume if it is it's some result of
an accident and it's not something that could be resold
as a component. I think a lot of it goes
to a scrap yard, um, maybe to a salvage yard.
(22:15):
And of course the road kill goes to Arvy's. You're
gonna let me get away with that one. Gull is
gonna make a similar comment about how people normally will
eat that stuff before the d ot gets around to it.
Do you know anybody's ever actually wrote no, No, I
I've I've eat I've hunted, and I've eaten animals that
(22:37):
have you know, like comedy, been like deer or something.
But I I myself have never you know, I don't
want to sound too fancy, man, but I've never been tempted.
I've never been driving by and saw an armadiller or
a possum and thought, you know what, tonight's the night
to surprise my girlfriends freaking see. So yeah, be excellent
(23:02):
to each other and to the road, well said, and
I love the call back to one of the best
film franchises of all time. This concludes today's episode, but
not our show. I am gonna go check out the
Ford and Ferrari film. He's coming out. I think that
that's as we're recording that releases this week, right, it's
(23:24):
coming out tonight actually, so we're gonna head out today.
We want everybody to drive safe, regardless of where you're
driving or where you're going, and most importantly, I have
a great time on the road. Well I'm supposed to say,
most importantly, be safe, but you have a great time
to write. That sounds little dad of us. Do you
(23:46):
kids have a great time safe? Uh so, So the
conversation doesn't stop at the end of today's episode. We
want to hear from you. We want to hear your
car Debrie road stories. What's the weirdest thing you saw
on the road? Fun fact our fair Metropolis of Atlanta,
Georgia holds a dubious world record technically for the largest
(24:08):
amount of Dice or Die rolled at once. That's because
a truck from a gaming company had an accident here
and two hundred and sixteen thousand Dice or Die were
spilled across the roadway. So that's Those are some of
our crazy debris stories. You've got road stove, We've got
the road collapsing, we got some hub cap art, and
(24:31):
we've got all like hundreds of thousands of dice and
interstate interstate cow. How did I that's the best one.
Let us know, Let us know the weirdest things that
you've seen. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter
where we are car stuff hsw or some derivation thereof
you've heard Kurt and I refer to some of our
(24:53):
earlier episodes good news, folks, or you know bad news.
How you feel about the show. You can find every
single episode that Kurt, Scott and I have ever done
for free auto website car stuff show dot com. Thanks
everyone for listening and we will see you next time.
(25:17):
Car Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Welcome to another episode of Car Stuff. Everyone.
I am Kurt Garren and I'm here today with Ben Bowling.
How are you doing today? Ben always always do it
well man, as long as they keep the rubber on
the road. How are you doing, Hurt? I mean that's
good to hear. The same same as we start our
(00:22):
show today. It's always a good reminder to all of
us drivers out there that operating a vehicle on the
roadway should be undertaken with a certain level of responsibility
to you, your passenger, as well as your fellow human
being that you're sharing the roadway. We are all trying
to get somewhere important. We all have the same amount
of time in our day, been true, and we are
(00:42):
usually all in a hurry to get to where we're going.
Everyone out there listening, be excellent to each other. As
Bill s Preston Esquire said, And if you're thinking about
hauling something today, be sure to tie that down for everyone.
That's right. Look, if you don't have the time to
tie down that thing you're hauling, then you don't have
(01:05):
the time to drive to the place that you're taking
it to You know what I mean. I do a
lot of inappropriate hauling. I mean, I tie things down
best I can. You know what I mean, six ways
to Sunday or whatever. But the most important thing to
remember is that spending a little bit of extra time
at the front of these kind of missions or events
(01:29):
saves you so much potential headache down the road. You
were telling me off air one of You're telling me
a very strange road debris war story, and at first
I didn't believe it, and I have to say it
cracks me up because you're okay, that's right, Ben. I
was driving down I twenty one day and I saw
(01:54):
laying in the road ahead of me arrange oven that
I assume had fallen off of someone's truck, but I
guess just slid out of the back. So it's got
the four burners, the four stove burners on the top.
It's got an oven that you open up right, the
whole thing just sitting there. This blows my mind, though, Man,
you saw a road stove. I don't know whether these
(02:15):
are common enough that they can earn that name, but
we're calling it here on car stuff, uh, road stoves.
So it's strange. I do mention that it's funny because
it seems so incongruous. It seems just so out there
and unexpected, and most importantly, as far as we know,
no one was hurt. But my question is about the
(02:36):
driver hauling that that stove before it was a road stove.
Where were they going, what were they doing? What is
their life like such that they drop a stove in
the middle of the interstate and go, You know, things happen.
I mean her, I got places to be. I'll just
tell him the stove didn't make it. You would think
(02:58):
wherever that place was, they would need the stove with them,
But I don't know. I mean, I thought about it
after it happened, and I was surprised that I didn't
see anyone at least stopped on the shoulder. I would
like to think that they knew that it fell out,
But then again have a hard time wrapping my head
around that logic of why you don't stop. So I'm
(03:19):
with you, man, I don't I don't understand. There is
one thing, though, is speculating about, and I want of
your opinion on this, Although it is a little bit depressing.
Do you think that people who just dropped stuff in
the interstate like that, or it falls off the back
of their vehicle, whether it's a stove, washing machine, anything,
you know, like uh that on that order of weight
(03:42):
or mass. Do you think when people drop that stuff
they hesitate to pick it up because they're scared of liability?
Possibly I would be scared to pick it of course
that well, that would never happen to me. I just
want to because I tied stuff down. This person may
have thought about pulling over. Then they were a skeptical
about running out into the street to get the oven,
(04:03):
because first of all, if you make it to the
to the range, how are you going to then move
that from where it sits off of the road. So,
I mean, that's that's one of those things that you
have to grapple with. Is it worth my life to
go out there and try to get this stove off
the road, which I'm probably going to fail at anyway,
because I couldn't even tie it down in the first place. Yes,
Do you just like settle in while you got the
(04:25):
stove there? You just set up like a sink, maybe
a microwave, grigerator, just start living. That is an extreme
story of road debris. And what we found is that
road debris isn't just the result of car accidents and
can come from a number of situations, but it has
a huge impact on roadway safety. And the definition is
(04:51):
by necessity broad. How how does Uncle Sam define road debris?
They define the road debris or he defines road debris
as any object that would be in the road that's
not supposed to be there, and they refer to them
as non fixed hazards. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
said in two thousand eleven that more than eight hundred
(05:13):
people were killed by such non fixed hazards. Fairly dark statistic,
but it does put it into perspective kind of how
this seemingly lighthearted subject can have the serious effect on
other people out there. And that is sobering statistic, but
that is just addressing fatality. Still, more than eight hundred people,
(05:36):
it's unbelievable. How many accidents are we talking here? This
statistic here is according to the Triple A Foundation for
Traffic Safety. They did the study in two thousand four
that found that twenty five thousand accidents occurred because of
road debris. That seems like a very high number, but
we also have to realize there are millions of cars,
(05:58):
you know what I mean here in our fair metropolis
of Atlanta. There was a weird thing that was happening
by my house in my neighborhood, probably about six months
ago or so. This was a surface streep, a busy street,
but still a surface street, and I'd be walking down
the street and I started noticing this pile of hub
(06:21):
caps of like you know, the plastic hub caps that
are so common nowadays. Uh, And I wonder what it was.
At first, I swear man, I thought it was some
kind of art thing, and I thought, Okay, somebody's being artistic.
I guess, you know, this is like their creative voice
or whatever. It's not for me, but there you go.
(06:43):
So I didn't mess with the hub caps anything like
that until my girlfriend and I were walking gosh too
to the local pizza place or something. As we were walking,
I heard up weird noise behind me, and uh, and
it turned around and there was this plastic hub cap
(07:05):
cover that it was like flown off because there was
a pothole that I wasn't noticing. I'm not sure whether
it was like the pothole or the curb or some
combination thereof, but apparently for for more than a week,
people have been driving on this and you know, going
at a pretty high rate of speed for the size
of the road, and they have been hitting this unexpected
(07:28):
pothole and losing I guess the front right hubcap or
something to it. And then now, of course the hub
caps weren't all neatly falling in a pile. Somebody was
taking them and moving them to that pile. I don't
know who who was doing it. Maybe it was like
the security guard or the landscaping person at the local
(07:50):
bank or something, just trying to keep the driveway clean.
But it hit me that every one of those hub caps,
and there were easily more than fifteen, every one of
them was a piece of road debris generated by people
going too fast and hitting this unexpected pothole and was
really messing up people's cars. Eventually, someone gave it the
(08:15):
old Atlanta pavement fix, which is, instead of fixing the pothole,
you take a metal plate, like we mentioned the previous episode.
They just slap that on there, so now it has
that metal plate, and it got me thinking all the
weird road debris. Thankfully, it's not as dangerous as a
road stove, be at hub caps or glass or any
(08:36):
type of road debris, there's clean up involved, and so
the question then arises who picks it up, because if
no one picked it up, there would be just trash everywhere.
So obviously there's someone dedicated to this gigantic task. In
an accident situation, generally the clean up would fall upon
the tow truck driver the to clean up the minor
(08:58):
debris that they can fit on their truck. Or you'll
see a bumper, yeah, hanging out of the window of
the damaged car on the rear of the toad truck.
They might toss the side mirror in there or something
like that. And that clean up, though, is part of
the charge that people incur when they get a vehicle
toad other things like stoves. Maybe that would fall on
the d O T maintenance screws road stove for some reason.
(09:22):
Do you remember that song Convoy? I'll play it for
you later Convolation by C. W. McCall. We won't play
it on air. Long time listeners know what this song
is about. It's a great song about a great road trip.
But now instead of the lyrics, plain in my head
as convoy. It's going roads though, I gotta send this
(09:42):
to you. I you know what. I'm sorry because I
know this makes no sense to you, but I guarantee
you when you see the when you see the video,
it'll make sense. Can connect the dots then and connect
the dots, And just to manage some expectations here, man,
I want you to know going into it that the
Joe is not worth it. It's not a good joke
that I just made, but it's a great song. So
(10:15):
the tow truck driver has to handle cleaning up an
accident oftentime. And while these tow truck professionals are doing this,
they're often also having to deal with someone who is
having a terrible day. Someone who've just gotten an accident,
is maybe in shock, is definitely irritated because who wants
(10:38):
to deal with insurance and is a little adult. They're
happy to be alive, right, hopefully they're not injured. It's
easy for people. I know it sounds silly when we say, oh,
there was a accident on the road, someone left their bumper.
Who forgets their bumper? But when you are so grateful
not to be dead, that sort of can wombs The
(11:00):
majority of your attention span, and it's very easy to
just realize days or even weeks later that you left
hub caps or tire or a bumper. Who took care
of that, you know what I mean. It's all a blur. Yeah,
that's even if you think of it at all. Absolutely So,
speaking of professionals, let's talk a little bit about what
(11:24):
happens when it goes beyond the tow truck driver. Because
the tow truck driver, just be clear, they're not going
to be driving around in their non towing hours just
picking up trash and debris from the roadside. They only
do that when they're towing a car. Generally, the tow
truck driver will have the capacity to clean up minor
(11:47):
fuel spills. They have material that they can pour on
the road that absorbs oil gas, that sort of thing,
and then they can sweep that up and have it
contained and dispose of it properly. For larger bills, perhaps
there will be a has matt professionals coming in to
clean up their companies that do that sort of thing
out there as well. And unfortunately, sometimes it's not just
(12:10):
vehicle debris that is left behind after an accident. Sometimes
there's medical type waste left behind as well. So back
to the darker side. When paramedics and firefighters are trying
to save a life at the scene of an accident,
they're not typically concerned about what they leave behind at
the scene, So someone must pick that up as well,
and that team of people is going to be the
(12:31):
good folks at the d O T. So whenever you
see these these folks cleaning up after the scene of
an accident, drive carefully, give them some give them a
wide berth, give him respect because they are doing a
job that is often as unpleasant as it is necessary
(12:51):
and crucial. Right. It's weird because one of the things
we didn't talk about when we've been kicking around the
idea of road debris was the concept of road kill. Right,
And you and I have seen a lot of road
kill in our time. I say that authoritatively, but we've
driven through rural Georgia, you know what I mean. So
(13:12):
you'll see dear, you'll see crow, you'll see possums, raccoons
and so on. There's an interesting distinction in the way
that some municipalities and communities approach it. There's a public
information officer named Ronnie Edis who was talking to Rick Davis,
a journalist for The Press Enterprise, about who is responsible
(13:33):
for car debris and road clean up, and he said,
if a dead animal on a road for which we're
responsible for the maintenance of is a cat, dog or
some other domestic animal, our departments operations staff will come
out and pick it up and haul it away. But
if the animal is a possum or some other wild creature,
(13:54):
we do not pick up those interesting distinctions. I would
love to get more details on this. I'm wondering if
maybe it's a conservation thing, like wild animals die, so
you want, uh, you know, when they die, their food
for other wild animals, buzzard. Yeah, let the buzzards get it,
or you know, other scavenging creatures. But to be clear,
(14:18):
that's entirely speculative. I don't know why. I just imagine
that that's the case. So that goes to show that
people working for DT, people working for maintenance, they don't
just clean up the remnants of car accidents. They also
have to clean up road kill. They'll also need to
handle debris that has nothing to do with an accident
(14:39):
but could cause one, like a downed tree. Well, roadkill
can cause an accident. I've seen people swerving around carcasses before,
so I mean they can be dangerous as well. Do
you remember the time when the cows got loose on
the interstate Oh okay, this one is okay because some
of the cows survived, right, Yeah. Yeah, the truck that
(15:00):
was carrying them may have been involved in some sort
of an accident that caused the cows to escape. This
was early in the morning, so before the morning rush hour,
so there was an operation to wrangle all of the
cows up. So they had to call in some I
guess cowboys to come in, and they ended up getting
most of them. They were able to get the last one,
(15:21):
I believe during the evening rush hours. I mean, this
was an all day event. I just liked the idea
of these uh, these guys hanging out, you know, maybe
they have maybe they have a station the way that
firefighters do. Well, I guess it would be a ranch.
They're hanging out and then one of them gets the call.
They're like, all right, boys, saddle up is what we've
(15:43):
been training for. You know. I'm sure they loved it. Yeah. Yeah,
we've had a couple of animal escapes like that. I
(16:04):
remember a while back. I believe it was in Atlanta.
There was a zebra on the loose, and I learned
about it during rush hour, and briefly I thought, you know,
can I make it over there in time to see
the zebra before they catch the poor guy? But I
had I had gotten the information wrong, and there's no
(16:24):
way I was going to make it I have. I
don't know if this even counts. Is debris have a
catastrophic road debris story. The Hubcap one was the fun one.
But this, this road debris story, is something that I
am sure affected both of us to some degree. And
it is the day in Atlanta that the road itself
(16:47):
became debris. That's right, folks. A few years back, for
some reason, there's a sketchy story behind us. For some reason,
few years back, part of Interstate eighty five, which is
a crucial artery through the city, just collapsed. Part of
the interstate that was built on a bridge dropped, literally
(17:08):
just dropped to the ground under the most sketchy of circumstances.
We can talk about this in a lighthearted manner because
somehow no one was injured. I can't believe it. That's amazing,
is amazing. So it just it dropped. And the official
story was that there were three people who were sleeping
(17:28):
rough living outdoors, and they were under this bridge and
they had started a fire, and the fire grew out
of control, and the fire, fueled by the stuff it
consumed under the bridge, led to the collapse of the road.
It kind of looked like a fiber optic cable of
some sort, something like that. It's the orange stuff that
(17:50):
you sometimes he sticking out of the ground waiting to
be buried, and so it's gigantic rolls of plastic pipe
apparently burns very hot, hot enough to collapse a concrete bridge.
Another thing this unrelated to road. Another thing that was
fascinating was a lot of conspiracy theories proliferated and people
were saying, well, the official story doesn't quite add up,
(18:13):
which I agree with. There's some pretty major plot holes there. Um,
And they would say the official story doesn't add up.
You know what really happened. They did this cover up
because they didn't want people to know what was really
going on. You gotta love how there's always a they
in these sorts of stories. Some of the theories I
(18:33):
heard were that some faction of the local government was
smuggling something or how to corrupt what they were either
smuggling something illicit, and they decided the best way to
keep it out of the news was to cut lapse.
A bridge doesn't check out. And then the other thing
was the idea that there was some corruption or city
(18:55):
funding scandal and that people were making gonna make a
lot of money off repairing the bridge. I don't think
there was some vast insidious conspiracy to collapse a bridge
because well why, I mean, it made national news. How
often does a major interstate catch fire and collapse? It's
(19:17):
not every day you see it. But hey, you know
who knows what goes on out there? You know, just
just the people under the bridge, like like that is that?
Isn't there a red Hot Chili Pepper song about that?
And so we see the story of road debris has
several unsung heroes. There are towing professionals involved, there are
(19:39):
d ot workers involved, also professional. Of course, there are
occasionally cowboys involved. But if we're looking at the unsung
heroes of road debris, we have to mention one of
the most important people in the entire equation, and that
is you speci Typically, you listening now, no, not that person. You.
(20:04):
Of course, if you have a minor accident, say you're
bumped the tree, or you back into your mailbox, yeah,
or a barrier at a parking deck or something, yeah,
simply pick up after yourself. Tie down your oven, Tie
down your oven. If you've learned one thing, don't be
a part of the road stove epidemic eating this nation's
(20:25):
inner states alive. Only you can prevent road stoves. It's true, though,
you should try to make not to be two boy
scout about it, but you should try to leave the
scene of an accident better than it was when you
found it, if at all possible. Because if you don't
like the idea of you cleaning up for your own sake,
(20:48):
just think of the fact that you could be potentially
saving the lives or ensuring the safety of people that
you may never meet. You know what I mean. It's
for the driver who comes behind you and the driver
roho comes after you. And you still need to use
common sense when it comes to road debris, whether it's
(21:10):
a washing machine, road stove, what have you, and take
a few extra minutes to check your ties and make
sure that you're not going to have something flying off
in the middle road. You know what we should mention
some of the other common ones. Ladders, I said, a
lot of ladders from construction trucks. Uh, mattresses. Sometimes people
(21:31):
just I think what it is is they don't realize
how swiftly a mattress can come become airborne at high speeds.
This was fascinating to me, Kurt, because I honestly had
never thought about it, And now I have a new
founder appreciation for the people who come and clean up
the road, because if they weren't there, the roads wouldn't
be drivable. Think about how much stuff just adds up
(21:52):
on a given day. Think of the hub caps, just
the pile of hub caps a low Maybe we have
to do another sell. And where where all this stuff goes? Yeah,
junk yards, salvage yards, whatever, I would assume. Okay, so
I would assume if it is it's some result of
an accident and it's not something that could be resold
as a component. I think a lot of it goes
to a scrap yard, um, maybe to a salvage yard.
(22:15):
And of course the road kill goes to Arvy's. You're
gonna let me get away with that one. Gull is
gonna make a similar comment about how people normally will
eat that stuff before the d ot gets around to it.
Do you know anybody's ever actually wrote no, No, I
I've I've eat I've hunted, and I've eaten animals that
(22:37):
have you know, like comedy, been like deer or something.
But I I myself have never you know, I don't
want to sound too fancy, man, but I've never been tempted.
I've never been driving by and saw an armadiller or
a possum and thought, you know what, tonight's the night
to surprise my girlfriends freaking see. So yeah, be excellent
(23:02):
to each other and to the road, well said, and
I love the call back to one of the best
film franchises of all time. This concludes today's episode, but
not our show. I am gonna go check out the
Ford and Ferrari film. He's coming out. I think that
that's as we're recording that releases this week, right, it's
(23:24):
coming out tonight actually, so we're gonna head out today.
We want everybody to drive safe, regardless of where you're
driving or where you're going, and most importantly, I have
a great time on the road. Well I'm supposed to say,
most importantly, be safe, but you have a great time
to write. That sounds little dad of us. Do you
(23:46):
kids have a great time safe? Uh so, So the
conversation doesn't stop at the end of today's episode. We
want to hear from you. We want to hear your
car Debrie road stories. What's the weirdest thing you saw
on the road? Fun fact our fair Metropolis of Atlanta,
Georgia holds a dubious world record technically for the largest
(24:08):
amount of Dice or Die rolled at once. That's because
a truck from a gaming company had an accident here
and two hundred and sixteen thousand Dice or Die were
spilled across the roadway. So that's Those are some of
our crazy debris stories. You've got road stove, We've got
the road collapsing, we got some hub cap art, and
(24:31):
we've got all like hundreds of thousands of dice and
interstate interstate cow. How did I that's the best one.
Let us know, Let us know the weirdest things that
you've seen. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter
where we are car stuff hsw or some derivation thereof
you've heard Kurt and I refer to some of our
(24:53):
earlier episodes good news, folks, or you know bad news.
How you feel about the show. You can find every
single episode that Kurt, Scott and I have ever done
for free auto website car stuff show dot com. Thanks
everyone for listening and we will see you next time.
(25:17):
Car Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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