A couple of days ago I was driving to Inverell on the Gwydir Highway; it had been raining steadily for most of the day and was raining at the time of the following incident.

A car coming towards me, some 300 metres away, suddenly sent up a great spray of water from its left front wheel, spun violently through 360 degrees and came to rest facing me and on the wrong side of the road. I’d hit the anchors pretty fast and drove up to it and stopped with my hazard lights flashing.

There was a young woman gripping the steering wheel and in some shock, she didn’t know what had happened and said that the wheel was suddenly wrenched out of her hands
I got her to pull off the road, pulled off also and gave her a coffee from the thermos that I usually carry; then I explained to her what had happened.

Her left front wheel had hit a depression in the road that was full of water and the sudden resistance had pulled the steering wheel out of her grip; she learned something that most older drivers on country roads know about rain and water on the road.

On many roads there are shallow depressions along the tar on both sides of the road, these are caused by a combination of heavy trucks and skimpy foundation, the problem has been known for decades but no Government does anything about it as that would cost a lot of money for no votes and once the sun comes out the problem goes away.

Had the young lady rolled her car and been killed she would undoubtedly have been seen as another “speed kills” statistic.

I’m also glad that I wasn’t closer or I may have been a statistic too.

Is Mise,

That problem exists not only on country roads but on
suburban streets as well. We constantly encounter
unfixed depressions. Fortunately they haven't been
filled with water and driving at slower speeds all
we feel is the big bump and it does not affect the
steering. It may affect the wheel alignment.

Councils don't maintain the roads as they should.

cont'd ...

It appears that the damage in suburban streets
is caused by delivery trucks and garbage trucks.
We recently reported one major large pot hole
near a high school on a suburban street.
Fortunately the council did fix it. Probably nobody
reports all the other damages - so nobody fixes it.
And it doesn't appear that the councils don't do
regular inspections and maintenance.

Foxy, I guess it depends on your council? For weeks now, my Council has been resurfacing roads all through town. It's a western NSW rural area on the Murray, with a very low population, few towns but a LOT of roads, mostly dirt. Road management has improved greatly in the last 20 years. The main change is closing the dirt roads quickly when it rains, so they don't get badly cut up and require a fortune (and months/years) to fix. The Council can then focus on maintaining the sealed roads, and gradually sealing the most heavily used dirt roads.

Dear Cossomby,

Welcome back - missed your posts!

Your council sounds great. I live in metropolitan
Melbounre. On the whole our council does a good
job. And they did react when we reported the pot hole.
Perhaps because it was near a high school and very
busy activity. On the whole though, maintenance of
our suburban roads is slack.

I think the German Autobahn uses much thicker foundations than Australian roads the capex reducing maintenance requirements. Germany is also four times larger in population and many times smaller in area.

Australia has unique problems but we are historically a very inventive people.

At 100 km/h cars handle differently to 60 km/h.

I've long thought that the main reason for accidents is a lack of concentration- not so much speed- you can't multitask while driving

This behavior is a problem accentuated by front wheel drive. Some are worse than others, but I have owned a number of front drive cars that would "head for the hills" when they encounter a patch of water, or the ridge of loose gravel that develops between the wheel tracks on gravel roads.

In any front drive without a limited slip diff the suddenly unweighted [no traction] wheel will spin up to higher than road speed, & spear the car off in another direction when traction is regained after the puddle. Preventing this is one of the reason for traction control fitted to up market higher powered cars.

It does happen to a minor extent in rear drive cars, but the effect on directional control is much less. In rainy conditions I insist my lady take the ute. They are not great for traction at any time, but are much less likely to try to kill you than her little front drive shopping trolley hatch, when they hit standing water.

Well done Issy, the young lady was fortunate to have someone coming towards her who was decent enough to stop and lend assistance.

I second that. Well done Is Mise!
We need more like you on our roads.

Hi Foxy and Issy,

Not so fortunate for a dear friend of ours. She is 75, recently lost her husband. Was driving on a stretch of busy road, 1 lane each way, 80km speed limit, she was probably doing 60km, she is a slow driver. A bloke in a ute came up behind her, tail gating, she tapped her breaks a couple of times, must have upset him. Its not the road you can overtake on, lots of on comers and side roads. At the end she went left into a 3 lane main road, he cut inside her then in front of her, and slammed on the breaks for no reason. She slammed her breaks on, a car behind ran up the back of her, the ute took off. Insurance wrote her car off, $7k payout, but she wants her little car back, repairs will cost $13k, Anne has to foot the difference. Of course economically better to take the $7 and buy another car, well she wants her car, what can one say.

Rip off old people, same lady her phone with Telstra $75/month. I said are you still on a plan paying for the phone. No, I finished that years ago, but since then the nice man at the Telstra shop has been upgrading my plan. WHAT! so you can make unlimited calls to Ethiopia, should you ever need to! She does local talk and text, a couple of gigs of data. I said Anne, you should be paying no more than $30 tops per month, they are ripping you off!

Hi Paul,

I can understand the lady's love of her car. My husband
has a Ford Fairmont XE (automatic) that he loves. The
rego on it is a fortune each year. Plus at the moment
it's battery's gone dead and needs to be replaced.
Which my husband will of course do. Seeing as we've also
got a Holden Statesman - I keep trying to persuade him
to sell the Ford and stay with the Statesman, but he won't
hear of it. So we've got double everything in payments.

I wonder what I can say to persuade my husband to sell the
Ford? Or should I just give up?

Thank you, Foxy and Paul, but I couldn’t really ignore her, she was blocking the lane ahead of me (big smilie).

Is Mise,

You've got a great smile!

Issy, unfortunately there are people in this world who would simply drive around her, then give her a gob full for the inconvenience. I cant read this bloody phone.

Brake seen the prediction couldn't be bothered correcting. Got book returns, pick up BCL, get on my way, half way there by the long walk.

The point I make is, kindness is rather thin on the ground these days. For some helping others is a no no, they always have an excuse, too busy, they'll be okay, not my problem etc. Suspicion of others is common, don't want to know the neighbours, can't help, the notion that others want something from us. Its a bad reflection on modern society. That shock we once had of the fella who falls down with a heart attack on the busy sidewalk of New York, and people simply walk around him, no one helps. New York could be Sydney or Melbourne, other cities in Australia. Maybe we're not that bad yet.

Keep up the immigration rate, & we soon will be.