John White
Gold Member
I hate those 4x8 steel traffic plates they put on the road. Some time ago they were working on the road I was hauling gravel with my dump truck, that had one. I always try to hit them square on with all wheels or 2 wheels on and swing left a little with two off. This plate was placed about 2 ft. right of the center line. I had been driving over it for a few days delivering gravel to a job site. It was in a area with a double yellow line. I could not go right because I would be off the berm and a hole where they were working. I usually just swung in to the other lane slightly so I wouldn't hit it with my tires. This one day I had just swung a little to the left and a car was coming pretty fast and I had to get back in my lane. My inside rear tire caught the edge of it. It blew my tire and the force some how knocked the plate up and caught my rear brake line, also ripping the rear backing plate off. But that is not the bad part. There was some fellow following me real close and he had a old pick up made in the 30's. He had just got it out of a restoration shop. He had spent over $20k in having it restored. My truck somehow flipped that plate up and it caught his under carriage, hitting the transmission and busting it and caught the rear differential taking it out along with springs and hangers. The whole rear end was sitting in the road. I had to pull off in the first place I could. The people didn't want me leaving it there very long. I had a crew waiting on the gravel. I went to the shop and got a spare tire, repaired the brake line and finished my delivery. Later I replaced the backing plate. I contacted the police and they gave me the name of the insurance carrier and all they paid me was $75 for a used tire I had put on. I don't know the out come of the other fellow. The last I seen him he was sitting in the middle of the road, dumfounded as to what happened. There is another one the state has just put down where I have to cross it every day. They put asphalt around it but the big trucks have bowed it and the corner is sticking up. My pucker factor comes into play every time I have to cross it. It is placed at about a 45 degree angle and about 2 feet left of center. Not enough room to go right and hit it square and if you move left, you are in the line of traffic. You have all those over paid engineers working for the state and they cant come up with a solution. My redneck solution for improvement, would be to make it a law that all traffic plates put down would have to have a 12" radius cut on the corners. That would help a lot and prevent it from busting your tire. Any one on here reading this and works for the D.O.T let me know why this could not be done.
