Low flying objects.

Hi Joe

You are very lucky indeed and one would hate to think it coming through your front window.


All the best



Stephen

I recall a few years ago having a truck with a transportable building coming towards me and a length of angle (light galvanised sheet) coming loose. It came of about 100m in front of me and hit the road on a flat angle, it bounced up as I went past and landed just behind me where it skidded to a stop.

If the timing was different it could have quiet easily have come through the windscreen and ended up spearing either my passenger or myself. It was also lucky that there was no one right up my ginger.

This still gives me nightmares to think what might have happened..

This type of incident is way more common than you would expect.

I get really angry at the number of truckies who are careless about ensuring total security of their loads - or truck and trailer components.

In my many years on the road, I have had a number of similar "narrow escapes" from death, caused by "foreign objects" falling off passing vehicles.

Some, I've encountered, lying on the road. Others have flown past me.

I've come across a complete truck spare wheel carrier frame, lying in the middle of my lane on Gt Eastern Hwy, West of Merredin - just on dusk - and hidden in the gloom, almost obscured by oncoming vehicle lights.

Luckily I spotted it in time to stop and pull it off the road. It weighed around 50-60 kgs and measured about 40cm x 120cm x 120cm.

My missus was travelling as passenger with a friend in her car, Northwards on Tonkin Hwy, near Gosnells, several years ago, when a huge bolt, similar to the above, flew off a passing truck, towards them - and just cleared the roof in the centre of their windscreen.

The Missus said she was convinced she was going to wear it, and she ducked instinctively.

I knew a shearer from Kulin who went to live in Southern QLD around the mid-1980's.
Not so long after he moved there, he was out West, driving towards Toowoomba, late at night, and as he passed a truck going the other way, a piece of unidentified steel fell off it and went through his windscreen, hit him smack in the face, and killed him instantly.

The Police could never find the truck, or the truckdriver - only that the origins of the piece of steel, was from a truck.

I've come across the following, lying on the road - wood gluts, star pickets, hay bales, railway sleepers, nondescript pieces of steel big enough to cause serious damage, and load straps and binders.

There have been people killed by flying wheels coming off trailers, and a bloke was killed on the Kwinana Fwy quite a number of years ago, by a single wayward brick, that fell off a brick truck going the opposite direction.

From that incident onwards, all pallets of bricks carried, must be either shrink-wrapped with PVC, or have steel mesh surrounding the pallet/s.

It's of major concern that so many of these types of incidents happen, and I think that the amount of load security checks on commercial vehicles should be increased.
The penalties for insecure loads are quite steep, but more random checks need to be carried out.

The worrying part is - those of us with mechanical experience know, that that's a stepped (or shouldered) retaining bolt - with the nut missing.
It makes you wonder whether it came from an item being transported, or off a trailer, or off the truck itself.

It then makes you wonder, what larger component is no longer being properly retained in position.
Hopefully, the loss of that bolt is discovered promptly.

Back in '93, I bought a new 100 tonne Drake, 4 rows of 8, spread low-loader, along with the matching 2 rows of 8 dolly.
My manager and I drove over to Brisbane from Kalgoorlie, to pick it up, and take it back to W.A.
We picked up a 75 tonne Cat excavator from Browns Creek in NSW, for a backload to cover the trip.

We got out along the Western part of the Long Paddock, just past Caiguna - when my manager, who was driving the float (I was escorting), noticed that one set of the dolly wheels wasn't tracking properly.

We stopped and inspected the rig, and were horrified to find that the wheel bearing cap and nut on one axle on the dolly, was gone completely - and the entire wheel hub and set of duals was just starting to "walk" off the end of the axle!!

It was a very serious omission on the part of Drakes employees, that someone had forgotten to fully tighten and insert a cotter pin, in that particular wheel bearing nut!

We didn't want to consider the possibilities of what could have happened with a wheel hub and set of duals parting company with the dolly at 80-90kmh! And we were only grossing a "light" 107 tonnes!

Drake could only apologise for their major error, and set up better assembly checking procedures.

Cheers, Ron.

MANGANESE!

Got a raw piece of it the size of a cricket ball land in my lap after it fell off the back of a B-triple side dumper moving from Woodie Woodie to god knows where on the Rippon Hills Road! Christ it hit the windscreen with a bang and fairly scared the shit out of me and "Outback Al" at the time and left a hole in the windscreen of a corresponding size! Thankfully though a few strips of 100 mph tape held it till I got back to Melbourne 2 months later!!

Mick

I watched a pin off an excavator come off a low loader and cartwheel down the road. It went under the taxi in front of me and jammed under the gearbox launching him a few feet into the air. Not a good day to be a cabby. He was very lucky not to have been injured. The car was wrecked.

Lucky escape Joe, glad you (and passengers ?) got through this ok.

Don't forget all, you have to be mindful of loads on any vehicle, I've seen tradies ladder come off roof racks, bottles / cans out of ute trays.

There are fines in most (all ?) states for unsecured loads, and that means anything that could come adrift when driving.
I think one state(s) have just enacted a new law that nothing is unsecured INSIDE a vehicle cabin too, to prevent flying object injuries when braking or in crashes.

Wide loads are certainly common around our country, probably WA and outback where mines etc operate sees more serious loads.

Took this off the dash cam yesterday of a dump truck on the Mid Western Highway, between West Wyalong and Rankin Springs, he was heading east.

I was expecting something around the bend, but not this . . . the lead pilot vehicle escorting these sorts of wide loads usually gets out onto your side of the road, flashing all lights to indicate it's a serious load.

Is this a baby one Joe ?
I think it might be.

Like all of us, I too have seen various objects on the side of the road in the bush but the closest I have come to an unwelcome visitor was in suburbia.

Travelling along on a dual lane road and the ute in front was a bit slower so I moved to the other lane, about one second after I did this, the lid on the large BBQ on the back of the ute took off and landed on the road right next to me.

If I had stayed in the other lane it would have been in my lap, scary stuff

It's amazing really that more people aren't killed or injured when you think about this topic !

Back in the mid 80's I was riding my FJ1100 Yamaha from Sydney to Adelaide across the Hay plain - was cruising along nicely at 110 kph ;) when another motorcycle coming the other way who I'm guessing was also cruising along at 110 kph ;) when I saw him look down suddenly and then I saw this big cylindrical object heading straight towards my face - ducked my head in less than a split second and got hit on the very top of my helmet with what turned out to be his muffler. We both stopped and turned around and met at where the muffler had stopped and couldn't believe our luck - particularly mine ! Only that morning the other chap had a new 4 into 1 exhaust system fitted to his Suzuki. We refitted the very dinged up muffler after some panel beating and bush mechanics and went on our merry way !

I still shudder every time I think about this near death experience !

Happy and safe travels


Gazz

A guy died out near Muswellbrook years ago from the vehicle he was in hitting a shipping container latch on the highway near the power stations.

It just wasn't his day. Picked up with a suspected heart attack and traveling to hospital in the back of an old petrol F-truck ambulance when it hit the chunk of steel that punctured the fuel tank and set it on fire.
Poor ambo's only just got themselves out and had no chance of moving the stretcher.

It was laying in the midle of a southbound lane on the Pacific highway halfway between Coffs harbour and Woolgoolga outside the zoo at Kumbaingeri. It was the large rhs that the locking pin fits into on the corner of a semi trailer to fasten containers on. It some how became unwelded and had fallen of.
Two of my workmates were transporting an elderly man accompanied by his daughter to hospital in an F100 ambulance in the early hours of the morning.
The amulance passed over the steel object and in doing so it flipped up and ruptured both fuel tanks.
A fire followed and a pool of 150 litres of petrol surrounded the wagon and no way of opening the back door or moving the Ambulance forward.
The Ambo and Daughter in the back managed to sqeeze into the cab and escape through a front door.
The fibreglass ambulance burned to the ground and the elderly gent on the stretcher died a horrible death.
The semi with the missing part was never located.

Joe,

That's a serious "missile!" It looks like a trailer "rocker box" pivot pin, so weighs maybe 2-3kgs, nearly 50mm in diameter, and at least 250mm long. It should be retained by at least one Nyloc nut, if not two. Glad to know it wasn't on target!



Back when the Victoria Highway wasn't sealed, we were travelling after dark near the Keep River crossing, and something on the road was highlighted by another oncoming vehicles lights. It looked like a snake, rearing up, ready to strike the unwary. Turns out it was a tyre locking rim, off a truck wheel. It had the potential to not only damage the guts of the ute, but enter through the floor pan and injure the youthful occupants.

In the same area, a year or two earlier, a traveller had run over a steel picket, hidden in the dust, in his Mini Minor. The picket pierced the floor pan, then the driver's thigh and he was evacuated by the RFDS.

Hope you're both going well, Joe?

Bob

Quite unexpected things can turn into missiles as well. Travelling at 110 kph on the Federal Hwy, I once had a chunk of truck retread rubber flipped into the air by a Landcruiser in an adjacent lane, it hit the front tyre of my vehicle with a substantial thump so I pulled over to check. It had ripped a lug off my Desert Dueler with the casing exposed. Goodness knows what it would have done to a small sedan.

.
A few airborne missiles have thankfully just missed me over the years. Several smaller ones have damaged the windscreen of course.

But the classic was at 110kph on the freeway from Gold Coast to Brisbane when a surfboard took flight from the roof of the vehicle in front and headed straight for Roz's face. A very quick flick of the steering put me onto the centre shoulder and the surfboard went past the side and under a following 4WD. No idea what happened to it then!
Hope my reflexes are as good now as then.

In my long gone motor bike days the gods must have been looking after me. In the days well before "Cover Your Load" rules I was nearly hit by a brick falling off a truck load of demolition material, and on another occasion, similar but this time a large clod of clay.

The third occasion was a sheet of corrugated iron liberated from the roof rack of some DIYer. It went past only a couple of meters away (or I went past it) at head height.

The fourth occasion I was in my car, driving home in the early morning from night shift. It was winter, poor light, grey overcast, grey light, grey concrete 100kph road. Body clock out of whack and tired, I didn't see the steel mesh factory floor parts crate (grey of course!) lying in my lane until too late and hit it at about 80, full frontal. It flew over the roof.Well, I was ok, but fearing the worst for my car stopped to assess the damage, fully expecting it to be undriveable with a punctured radiator, etc.

Amazingly, apart from the bent bits is was ok. And also amazingly, the object was heavy enough not to have flown over the roof, but to have come through the windscreen had it chosen to do so.

Scary stuff when you think about it.

In 2011 we were in Kakadu when someone told us the Darwin show was on. We decided to check out the Darwin show so we headed for Darwin. Between the bark hut inn and corroboree inn there was a traffic accident. Police everywhere and a triton ute smashed in the scrub.

After we spent the day at the show we stayed at the humpy doo pub on our way to shady camp. We set up camp and we were having a beer as this old fella wandered by. We said guday and he stopped to chat but he seemed a bit distant. My wife asked if he was ok and he just started crying.

He told us about how he had just lost his wife in an accident near the bark hut inn. It was the accident we had drove past 2 days earlier. A rock had fallen off the side of a side tipper who had just loaded at one of the quarries and had went through the windscreen and killed his wife. His son was on the way from cairns to pick him and his caravan up.

Life can be so fragile

Cheers Greg

I can recall the SIL's father (Jim) telling us of a near-death experience on the Collie-Williams Rd, on their way to Collie from Williams, way back in the mid-1960's.

He and his wife were travelling down this windy road, and saw a log truck barrelling along towards them.

Just before they passed, a log fell off the truck, hit the road, end-first, right in front of them - then the log did a spiral, when the other end of the log hit the road further to the left, and further back.

As the back end of the log hit the road, it lifted the front end of the log - and the front end went up and over the roof of their car - without touching it!!

The log then flew out to their left, into the scrub - still without touching the car!

Jim said they both ducked instinctively, thinking the log was coming through the windscreen - but it did this amazing corkscrew action, and missed the car completely!

They stopped in shock - but the log truck didn't!
I bet he knew he'd lost the log, but he wasn't stopping to face the music!

Cheers, Ron.

Also Low Lying Objects.

Was driving back from Brisbane towards Sunny Coast one night. We were in the overtaking lane doing 110kph passing a car when an object came into the view of low beam.
I hit the anchors and swung in behind the car I was passing.

The object was the guard rail. Must have just been hit and detached by something "large"...and the pointy end was hanging still suspended off one of its posts half way into the overtaking lane. Would have speared right into anything that hit it.

A few of us pulled up and a guy nudged it back into place with his truck.
Even with hazard lights on and people with torches waving people to slow down - still had idiots zoom past without slowing down. (I think most of them must have been heading to Inskip Point - sorry sorry - my sarcasm these days....gets out of control!!)