What are you doing today?

[phat46]

not to much today.. but tonight got terrifying..   since i live next to the hollywood freeway... there are crashes sometimes....

tonight was a big one...  by the time i got out there.. 5 cars had smashed together...  mostly off in the 3 and 4 lanes.. but this is at the bottom of a big hill and around a blind curve...   i could not see the cars at the front of the crash... but i could see the 2 that were at the back and they were full of people... the freeway was still flying... i started  waving my bright spot light at the crushed cars on the freeway to light them up... and let the on coming drivers see them... then i started yelling to get out of the cars and off the freeway... somebody next to me with a fog horn voice took over that... they were busy trying to get somebody out of the back seat and pick up their purses...  the guy next to me yelled even louder...  they got away from the car and not 10 seconds later 2 more cars came through at high speed and went right through the pile... those two cars stopped in the 1 and 2 lanes about 1000 feet farther down.. i did not see any body get out...   i kept flagging the back of the pile....   i watched the video of a camera man a few years back who shined his lights into the eyes of the traffic.. they watched him and drove straight into the crashed cars in front of them...


i think i am going to buy some road flares..  light them and throw them like grenades out onto the freeway to slow down traffic next time...   just wobbling the light is not that great...   i have not idea how the people in the cars are... the tow trucks moved them to the right shoulder and the fire trucks and paramedics were still with those cars when i left.. i did hear a siren about 10 minutes later...

those people would have been human bowling pins out there ... the 6th and 7th cars hit right were they were standing...


what causes me to cringe is the motorcycle riders who make late night runs on the hollywood freeway... at what sounds like 150+...  caltrans carved away about half an inch of the concrete surface to get rid of the highs and lows... so its like glass...   the salt flats  of hollywood..

That's a bad situation, makes you wonder what people are doing instead of driving when that happens.  
We have an area like that locally. Two major freeways , I-69 and I-94 merge right outside the city and are both headed to the international bridge that is located here. That means that there are many non local peole and an insane amount of truck traffic passing through to reach the border crossing. As you approach the border there is a long curve in the expressways and a really poorly designed entrance/exit. The local call this area "confunction juntion", the local bypass around the city merges with the expressway here and you can also exit the expressway locally here too, it is literally an "X", then a local access ramp joins the expressway just where you need to be in that lane to exit to Canada, so the trucks and border crossers don't want to leave that lane to let people merge on. It's been the site of many severe and fatal wrecks. Yesterday it rained all night and all day and for some reason there was a backup on that part of the expressway. The backups are usually caused by slow border inspections on the Canadian side at their Customs booths. When this happens the traffic backs up over the mile long bridge and back down the expressway. Then you get to confunction junction and the long curve. Usually what happens is that someone doesn't see the stopped traffic and plows into another vehicle. With all the rain yesterday a truck had to brake hard because of a backup and jacknifed the rig across the road. This instantly caused a stoppage behind him and a few minutes later someone in a van rearended another semi and was instantly killed. A few minutes after that a woman inan SUV clipped another semi and crashed and caused that semi to jacknife. So we had a two mile long wreck, the police had to shut down the freeway for the rest of the day and route all that traffic on local surface streets. This is the second busiest border crossing with Canada, after Detroit, and it really makes a mess with all the extra, literally thousands, of vehicles, many of them semis, traveling the surface streets trying to get to the bridge. Hopefully this will all go away within the next few years, the area leading to the bridge at the border will go from four lanes to nine lanes and the confunction junction area will be redesigned to eliminate the "X" factor. Meanwhile signage hs been added to alert people to possible backups, some with flashing lights when there is an actual backup, but people seem to still be able to just drive right into the back of another vehcle at freeway speeds. Really makes you wonder what people are doing right before they crash..... :?

[wayne petty]

i am part way into writing an email.. to the governor and to cal trans...


about using the existing network of inductive sensors in the pavement  and adding a few to keep track of traffic speeds...   and adding some electronic signs on the overpasses just before this area to alert people that there is slow or stopped traffic and to slow down or prepare to stop....

perhaps its time to write your highway departments also...

all i have to do it get it past the paper people who block all attempts of anything important getting through....

[BFS57]

Hello;
Wayne, There is a road here in Florida I drive, and the dang thing makes a 90 degree turn. Well, I guess someone got tired of scraping cars off their back yard so someone (I don't know who) put some new reflectors on the divide. These have (I think) LED lights in them (bright as can be) and they all blink at one time. What a super great warning about the curve and believe it or not there is a sensor that your car goes through to activate this little warning!!

[enjenjo]

Here in Ohio they are equiping stop signs at dangerous intersections out in the country with solar powered blinking LEDs right on the sign. You can see them for over a mile.

[enjenjo]

Spent the day cleaning up for the build day. Not done yet, but we made a big dent in it.

[39deluxe]

Does that work? maybe we should have a build day at my place so I can get my shop cleaned up.

I use that border crossing all the time to go to our hydrogen plant over in Sarnia. I usually get there late in the evening and come back across after midnight so I don't hit the big backups very often. It's good to hear that the road is going to be widened but I dread the many months of construction we will have to endure in the meantime.

Tom

[Charlie Chops 1940]

Had an excellent roadster day. Left home at 9AM wearing the usual and a winter coat to go 40 miles to lunch. Got back at 5PM down to a tee-shirt and another 150 miles on the rpu. Lots of back road two lane black top with a few miles of gravel thrown in too.

Wore out the clutch and gas leg even though I shift 4th and 5th without a clutch most of the time.

Charlie

[wchappo]

Had an excellent roadster day. Left home at 9AM wearing the usual and a winter coat to go 40 miles to lunch. Got back at 5PM down to a tee-shirt and another 150 miles on the rpu. Lots of back road two lane black top with a few miles of gravel thrown in too.

Hi charlie,so i see your GPS gets you lost too ,how's the "Bowls" mobile going,great to hear your having fun,ain't retirement great,don't know, how i used to fit work in ,if you get bored,its summer over here,you could always come out & play with the new toy,& pick the differences between the US body & the Aussie one,catcha Chappo

[phat46]

Does that work? maybe we should have a build day at my place so I can get my shop cleaned up.

I use that border crossing all the time to go to our hydrogen plant over in Sarnia. I usually get there late in the evening and come back across after midnight so I don't hit the big backups very often. It's good to hear that the road is going to be widened but I dread the many months of construction we will have to endure in the meantime.

Tom

Next time you cross the bridge be sure to wave. Since they have torn down the two blocks of houses between myself and the bridge I can now see the trucks as they leave the expressway and approach Customs. If you knew where to look you could see my place.

[enjenjo]

Joe and I got the BBQ cleaned up, and put into storage. Shop is ready for the work tomorrow.

[kb426]

This isn't my best post. I headed out to see my son today. It's a 370 mile round trip. About 40 miles from home, I met a semi and trailer. The truck kicked up a large rock and it landed on the visor above the windshield on the 32. Hell of a dent. Paint gone, etc. the good news is that if it would have been 3 inches lower, it would have gone through the windshield and caused some excitement. It wasn't in my plans to repaint anything right now but I have bare metal showing. I've been amazed my whole life what the fractions of seconds amount to. We were the only vehicles out 30 miles from the end of the earth. In my part of the world, we have lots of trucks and rocks. It's rare for one to be large and do this much damage. I hope the rest of you have a "damage free" weekend.

[Carnut]

oh gee, sorry about the rock thing, and yes it could have been worse.

Heh, heh, kinda reminds me of my 77 Silverado Pickup that has a rock chip in the windshield.

I had a brand new windshield installed about 22yrs ago and on the way home from the installer a rock got kicked up and chipped the windshield.

Since then nothing else has hit the windshield.

[chimp koose]

Worked on the project truck today. I didnt get much done . tried to get some "fixes" repaired,like replacing the block of wood bolted in to replace the missing rag joint in the steering from the previous owner. I also managed to get the master cyl. working. Tried to bleed brakes only to find bleeder screws rounded off from the last persons likely vice grip job. Frustrating.

[Crosley.In.AZ]

been arguing off and on  with toilet  for 2 weeks..

replaced the flapper valve to stop a leak into the bowl..  next week the filler up valve acts up and replace it

then the new filler up valve starts cycle for a split second every 5 - 10 minutes.. I  find a crack in the plastic  over flow tube where water is seeping into the bowl

replace the tube today.... now I can not get the G-D tank to stop leaking some where on the bottom between the tank bottom and bowl top.

May try another different gasket or  buy whole new crapper.

EDIT: looks like a new crapper is needed.  Leak i was chasing must be a crack between mount hole on tank bottom.  I guess I cracked the tank trying to stop the leak at the gasket and created more of a problem. I do not see a crack , but it leaks between the mount hole and water flow hole.

[Danimal]

Had planned to go to build day but another night of no sleep. My grandmother had a stroke and is in bad shape. The boys don't have their homework done. Ugh. I need a nap.

We did get the new '49 1.5 ton truck home yesterday, though.