QOTD: Do You Have an Accident-Prone Road in Your Neighborhood?
Matt wrote today about a mystery corner that seems to flummox drivers. A conveniently placed camera made me giggle a little as I read it -- we can laugh at that sort of stuff as long as no one is hurt.
That got me wondering -- do you have a trouble spot near you? Matt referenced the infamous 11-foot-8 bridge, and I gotta tell you, one of the highlights of my travel life has been seeing that underpass in person when I was in Durham on a press launch.
I've been wracking my brain thinking of a problem corner near me, but here in the city, six-way intersections tend to be more troublesome than curves. Chicagoans of a certain age will remember how Damen/Elston/Fullerton was before it was redesigned and rebuilt.
Then again, the Oak Street curve on famed Lake Shore Drive has been the scene of many a wipeout. Some of them far too serious to be funny.
My hometown in the suburbs has a curve near an old quarry-turned-lake that has caused the occasional issue -- there was a fatal crash in the area a few years back. Apparently, there were once homes near that curve, and my dad tells a funny story about one of his friends missing the corner and placing his car in the homeowner's bedroom.
If I spent enough time Googling, I could find plenty of examples of tight corners that drivers miss on a frequent basis -- sometimes out of stupidity, sometimes out of unfamiliarity with the road, sometimes out of intoxication, and almost always because of excess speed.
Oh, I almost forgot the most famous one of all -- the Snake in Malibu. There's one particular corner that once starred in YouTube videos in which the owners of high-dollar sports cars and sport bikes overdrove their limits and learned lessons the hard way.
Your turn -- is there a curve or corner near you that should get a camera aimed at it? Or, perhaps, a low bridge?
Sound off below.
[Image: Denis Belitsky/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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In my So. Cal beach area, there are 15 4-way-stop intersections, and 3 of every 5 beachgoers doesn't know how to negotiate them. They're not inherently dangerous, but just add locals' road rage, and there are a lot of wild "events".
Once I worked in a place where turnpike had an exit curve. Periodically cars went over the rail and fell down 30 foot hill. Lucky truckers sometimes had their semis hanged over that hill held by heavy cargo in a trailer.