Yesterday, 2am - driving home from Cambridge, MA - right/center of the highway, totally didn't see it till it was too late. The 'thing' gets stuck under my car. We pull off. My radiator is hissing away and "it" is firmly lodged beneath the poor MINI. Two other cars had encountered the debris - one with a flat tire - the other a flat and a side dent. At least I don't have a flat...

An hour or so later the flatbed arrives with the torrential downpours and thunderstorms. They hoist up the car, remove the debris.

It's a lobstah trap! In the middle of the freakin' highway...

Got the ID tags off the thing. The MINI has $900-1200 damage, depending if they can fix the radiator.

On an upnote - props to MINI Assistance. They wanted to send my MINI to Herb Chambers in Boston. I'm very anti-herb. Asked to have it sent to Peabody... not a problem. *sigh* I miss my MINI.

 

This winter ,going 70 MPH I hit a bowling ball sized chunk of ice/snow ,that was hiding under a dusting of snow.Dented the lower grill in the front cowling.
Cheap to replace,but I think I'm just going to paint teeth on the grill.

 

Not a weird thing to hit but weird how it happened.

I hit a squirl then about 10 yards later I was hit by a turky or I hit a turky, hard to say Bad drive to work, worse day for those two critters.

A turky is like a bowling ball with wings.

 

So was that dinner?

 

I had someting similar happen to me with a rock.

Just on pass on something I learned when dealing with the insurance.
If the object you hit is stationary it is your fault.
If the object is moving at then it is not your fault.

Strange but true

 

A few years ago, I owned a '91 Toyota MR2. While driving on a side street at about 30 mph, a big black cat tried to cross in front of me. I hit the brakes...but still hit it. THUMP.

This is the funny part: The cat actually got scooped up into the front grill.(car was slammed low). The cat stayed pinned in the grill for about 25 feet until the car stopped. I was expecting to see a mess...but no. The cat hops out of the front grill and continues running across the street as though nothing happened!
My passenger and I look at each other in complete amazement.

 

I had a friend who hit a deer and wound up with antlers sticking out of his perforated radiator! Had to admit it looked cool until he got the bill!

 

I hit a road gator (shredded piece of steel retread tire) last december, or actually it hit me when the minivan in front of me kicked it up into the air.

Damage pics here. A few thousand dollars worth of damage.

 

Oh dear, It's a very very sad tale. I was driving down a street i drive down almost everyday, and out of nowhere a duck flyes right into my front right of my MINI. I was so scared I drove a few more feet before going back to check on it. I went back to check it out and see how it was, my girlfriend was with me and has rasied many ducks in her grandmothers backyard. We went back to check on it, and another car had already stopped when they saw it. We got out to check on it and they had gotten it into a pail and looked at the dammage. I felt sooo bad! I had hit such a great animal thet was just flying at the wrong time. The ducks beak was bleading, but t looked as thought it may have been from his head.

The people who had stopped had picked it up and I ran to my MINI and got a pair of latex gloves from my first aid kit in the boot. We waited around for a while while the other driver called an animal shelter. We waited another 20 mins, and the other driver said we could go and that they were taking it to an animal shelter. It wsa kind of late, but as far as we know they got it in.

The worst part was , that I didn't have to heart to tell them that I hit it. there was no dammage to my car. Later on that weekend when I was giving my car it's weekend wash, I noticed a feather in my lower driving lights... IT was a sad tale. I felt soo bad for days...

 

I hit a huge tumbleweed. Got sucked right into my engine through the hole in the hood!! It was a mess, I didn't even try to clean it all out from the engine, over time, it all just blew out

 

I hate rocks...why does there have to be so many rocks on the road. My car hates em more than I do tho.

I've got type s bumpers and I'm gonna put em on and repaint everything and I'm gonna get InvisiGuard put on top of it. Great stuff from what i've seen, prevents rock chips from good sized rocks.

 

I was out Motoring in the country a few months ago and came across a small flock of wrens (there were about 5). Well, the buggers flocked right in front of my S and flocked off again. I noticed that their numbers had dwindled by one.... Oh, Great. Ran over a little bird.... So I continue on down the road and pull off at a gas station to see if the bird was stuck in the grill or something. Nope, nothing. THEN I noticed a small brown feather sticking out of the scoop.... I squinted a bit while looking in the scoop to see if anything was there. Didn't see anything so I popped the bonnet. Awww Man!!! There the little bird sat, burnin his now featherless butt on the intercooler... I scooped it up and put it under a nearby bush, then spent the next hour and a half cleaning little brown feathers out of the engine bay.....

Damn Flocking birds....

 

About six years ago, I was following a co-worker from Antwerpen down to Ostende (Belgium) when he clobbers something with his front left wheel, causing it to richochet off the concrete dividing wall and careen into my left rear wheel as I'm going +130 kph. Needless to say be both had blow outs, and damaged rims. as we limp over to the side of the road, behind a BMW sans oil pan, and a Ford Mondeo with a disintegrated wheel, the debris is nailed by a Mercedes behind us, getting lodged under its exhaust. The Merc pulls up behind the four of us, losing its muffler, four huge Russian Mafia types get out, get along side and lift the Merc, shifting it off the debris. Turns out to be a block of steel wrapped up in burlap. Sabotage?? Terrorism?? or just Lumpy the scrap iron dealer failing to secure his load? We'll never know for sure.

 

A friend was driving on a moderately rural road, rather twisty at about 25 mph with her two small children in their car seats in the rear. All of the windows were open in this 4 door vehicle, when all of a sudden she is aware of something approaching the car from the side at eye level to her left, quickly out of view because of the forward motion of the car, but hears a muffled "THUMP" from the rear seat. Looking in the rear veiw mirror all she can see is feathers floating in the rear seat and one of the childen is laughing and the other is crying. She quickly pulled off the road in the first driveway she came to and jumped out and opened the rear door to find a wild turkey had flown in the open rear window and had been smashed into the inside of the rear window right between the two children and was liying on the rear shelf. The children were o.k. but she was in a complete panic and apparently screaming at the top of her lungs. People from the house where she stopped helped her remove the children and the lifeless turkey from the car.

Not an unusual bird to hit, but uncanny timing and speed for it to clear the side window of a moving vehicle and to smash into the interior of the rear window !

 

20 some odd years ago ,when I was a crosscountry ski coach,instructor,I was taking some atheletes to a training camp.We were going down a twisty highway,and we drove right into herd of 8,9 deer.Well I hit one in my 72 chev short box van.No seat belts back then,made sure everyone was OK.Then made the long walk back with the tire iron to make sure it was deadWell I did not have to use the iron,bambi was done for.No damage to the van.They made them tough back then.Scary though.

 

I had a Vega wagon back in the early 80's and on Bush Street in S.F. I hit a naked, deaf, man who was running from the police. I pulled over and three cop cars flew past me. I drove back to the scene and told them I was the one who hit the guy. Luckily, he was on drugs because getting hit at 30mph by a vega is no picnic. The police said no problems with this because they saw everything.

See, I told you wouldn't believe me.

Oh, and last year, a rottweiler was running away from a pitbull and it ran into our Lexus while we were waiting to make a turn. The rott just kep on going and I checked for damage and all I saw was doggy salavia.

 

A bunch of years ago I was driving down a fairly developed road in front of a shopping plaza. I saw what looked like a large dog running in the road. As I got closer I realized that it was a deer. I slowed way down to get by it. As I was passing by I saw another three darting across the road in front of me. As I can to a complete stop the one in the road decided to turn and join the group. He tried to jump over my stopped car only he missed and hit the side door panel on the way up, landed on the roof, rolled down the hood into the road. I guess this startled the rest of them because they looked like they were running on ice and all four ended up falling down in the road. They quickly got up and scurried away. I had lots of little dents that I never got fixed because the car wasn't worth a lot.

-Dan

 

Well in the Mini, nothing too odd (fingers crossed!) :smile: In my Vette, tho, I saw something flying at me on the road. At first I thought it was a hubcap, no, it's a box!!! So anyways I hear it go under the car, and started to smell something funny- it was caught near the exhaust. Well I pulled over, it was a Domino's pizza box! With some pizza left in it???

PIZZA TO GO

I DIDN'T hit this, but when I was driving on I-275 north a while back, I saw a bunch of people swerving onto the shoulders and such. Somehow, a flatbed dropped a Sub-Zero restraunt sized refrigerator in the Middle of the highway That would have been bad, very bad, to hit that going 75MPH... I was driving a 1986 Grand Am at the time, which I'm sure doesn't crash well...

 

35 odd years ago,was being given a ride from Maine to Mass. by a friend and we hit a **** pheasant flying across the road with such force that it actually blew the windshield right out of the car!So there we were once we got the car to a standstill with the windshield in our laps ,and a very dead pheasant in the back seat!I took over driving as the driver was very shaken up,and it wasn't 5 miles down the road when we went by a statie ,who pulled out after us with sirens and lights blazing .The guy was really nice,and said "Gee, I couldn't help noticing that you don't seem to have a windshield,let alone an inspection sticker properly displayed." I sifted through the debris till I came up with the inspection sticker ,or at least what was left of it and then showed him the remains of the pheasant.After he got done LHAO ,he sent us on our way with suggestion to get the windscreen fixed asap.Gee, maybe that's why I've been through so many in ZANE GREY!!!

 

i was driving down the road at about 60 behind a big truck and a squirrel got sucked up into the truck's rear wheel well and all that came out was a big red puff... i thought it was pretty cool...

 

a couple months back i ran over a baby stroller, then it got stuck underneath the car. i called some friends to help lift the car, so i can pull it out.

 

One night, my wife was driving our civic (i was riding shotgun). Suddenly, a table falls off of a truck in front of us, and with cars on both sides, she can't change lanes, so she just stands on the brakes and ends up running the table over.

It was a pretty small wooden table, so we pulled over and looked at our car, no damage just some paint scrapes.

Later that weekend, I'm washing the car and realize that what I thought were scratches in the paint were actually paint marks from the table, I was able to scrub them all out, so you could hardly tell that we had hit anything.

And then, like two months later, I'm autocrossing the civic. Between runs, I look down and see this little piece of wood sticking out sort of under the front bumper. I reach down there, and pull out a small, turned piece of wood (sort of like a table leg, only smaller and decorative) from that stupid table we had hit months before.

 

A bit off the thread...

When I was in the Marines we had a KC-130 aircraft come in for an emergency landing after a bird strike at about 200 knots at 5000 feet. The bird had hit the leading edge of the aircraft and punched a hole in it. When they took the wing apart the bird was a hawk with a broken neck. Other than that it looked like it was completely undamaged. Living things are tough!

 

My MINI -

1. Ran over a hoop of wire and got stuck on something under the car, what an awful noise. No damage.
2. Everyone in front of me was dodging right around a large box except the idiot in the Range Rover directly in front of me decides to cut some people off and dodge left. I nailed an extremely large Pier One box that stuck to and completely covered the front end. I had to pull over and yank it off.

My Dodge Ram 4x4 (Prior to MINI)
1. Driving down the road w/ female friends. A cat runs in front of the truck and then the truck rocks and it sounds like I ran over a glass bottle. We stop down the road to get some ice cream and notice blood all over the side of the truck. Women start crying. Go back to the scene and find out a dog was chasing the cat and hit the rear wheel well edge, spun into the rear quarter panel, spun across two more lanes and landed DOA on the sidewalk. Two little girls are crying, one has rope burn on her hand where the dogs make shift leash pulled out of her hand. Some jack_ss is yelling at me for killing the dog (supposedly a family friend). The police stop and tell him to shut his mouth before he cites the little girl for not having a leash, no dog tags, and trespassing on private property. Then tells the man he should be nice to me before I claim or sue for the damage to my truck!
2. This could be a long list so I'll just list the highlights - Shot w/ BB gun while driveing down road, Ran over large mirror falling out of truck in front of me, 2x4 through windshield after being kicked up by cement truck on highway, Hit by crane on pier next to a ship, rear ended 6 times (no damage to truck at all thanks to large hitch ball), and lastly nailed in my driveway by the daughters boyfriend who says he did not see it (2000 Dodge Ram Quad Cab Sport XLT Plus 4x4 in Solar Yellow)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I just did in a Cardinal yesterday. Traveling at 80mph, I see him crossing from the left. He had plenty of altitude, but at the last second dove down and hit the top of the windshield. BAM!MINI makes the toughest windshields around. No crack or anything! Way to go MINI!!! [I've already knocked on wood. Don't anyone reply about their windshield problems! If you jinx me, I'll track you down!]