TIL people will park under overpasses and block traffic to prevent hail damage.
TIL people will park under overpasses and block traffic to prevent hail damage.
It’s not just hail damage, but visibility can also severely limited in huge storms. With a lot of water on the road risk of aquaplaning can also grow higher. Modern windshields shatter to a lot of small pieces, if a big hail hits it you won’t see nothing.
It can be safer to wait some minutes until the core of the storm moves away a bit. Just don’t forget to switch on both turn signals, aka hazard warning signals. At least it’s a common thing here where I live.
I’ve done this before, the rain could look less frightening on a fixed video than how you feel if you drive in it.
Why not do it when the conditions are also bad (bad visibility, lots of water), why only in hailstorms?
Also, arent hailstorms usually accompanied by little to no rain (rain usually follows a hailstorm, not the other way around, idk/afaik)?
And if aquaplaning is a serious concern (in the current millennium) you are either driving way too fast for your car & tires or have really bad (or ornamental) tires.
Sure, road quality is a factor too, but if you adjusted your speed to the conditions, you would see any giant rivers/lakes in the middle of the road.
Generally you should anticipate aquaplaning at basically any moment - and adjust the speed to that.
(That is counting on how capable you car electronics are to compensate for basic stability & the fact that aquaplaning is not something you would expect to go on for 100+ meters – that’s a lake, you should be able to spot it in time or you are again driving too fast for the visibility.)
The speed limit doesn’t tell you how fast you can drive in any conditions.
(But modern highways will automatically lower speed limits if conditions are that bad, or at least try to, so there is less idiots driving at full speed bcs that is what they are used to.)
(Also, I didn’t know modern windshields crack into more pieces what the old ones - structurally afaik they remained the same, and idk what legislature would show then to crack worse. Do you have any info on that? I don’t know what to look for. Just looking at random pics it might be brand/money dependant unfortunately. Like with most such things, there are huge price differences between windshields, OEM vs third party too.)
Yes, it is bad.
Road is critical infrastructure & you arent the only user.
done it before, pull off to the side off the road.
rule is, if the hotel is full fuck off to another overpass. you don’t just stop in a fucking lane.
Ok, so what counts as an emergency to use those lanes differs between countries … but it sure seems super weird to explain how “emergency due to hail” is only in the spot where there is no hail, and at the same time, right next to the overpass where it’s actually hailing, “no emergency” …
If you would stop due to hail under on overpass but not wherever else you would get caught in hail - you are stopping just to protect the car, not due to an emergency.
it’s possible to have baseball sized hail.
due to climate change it’s happened more often recently. to put it into perspective I have see baseball sized hail five times in my life. four of those have been in the last five years.
I’m not driving in baseball sized hail. in my book that IS an emergency.
for the Euroly-challenged, that’s a hailstone thats around 7-7.5 cm in diameter. I’ve driven through 2cm hail before, not fun but just go slow. anything less than that doesn’t really need you to pull over IMO.
I’m not driving in baseball sized hail. in my book that IS an emergency.
Never said anything against that.
Just pointing out that if that was true, you would stop by the side of the road anywhere, not seek an overpass & drive to there in ‘emergency conditions’.
Bcs this is what this post is all about.
Ppl stopping where they shouldn’t & in conditions they would just drive on if there was no overpass.
You wrote:
is full fuck off to another overpass
Why would you fuck off to another overpass if the conditions are dangerous?
If it was an emergency you would stop asap.
Yeah, the first time I heard about that I wtf-ed too, surely they caution against it bcs some sole idiot did it that one time & now we all have to listen about how not to do that for the rest of time?
Nope, turns out ppl just do that.
If going into oncoming traffic would somehow save their cars from potential hail damage, they would do that too.
(Now, it’s not just that people are idiots and/or car-brained, it’s also the system that forces many to buy cars that represent a lot of their wealth/income and the repairs/maintenance can have significant affect on their disposable income too.)