When we drive on public roads, we usually expect the odd bump or two. What we don’t expect is a massive hump to suddenly appear before us, throwing our car airborne. And yet, for one unlucky driver in Missouri last week, that’s precisely what happened.
As covered by Fox10, the incident occurred on Siemers Drive in Cape Girardeau on Sunday, June 22. Local Albert Blackwell was filming a small bulge in the road that had formed during the heatwave. The damaged area of the road had already been signposted as a “BUMP” by city authorities. As Blackwell filmed, the road suddenly burst upwards.
As the road split and bulged upwards, an approaching driver in a Toyota Corolla had nowhere to go. As their sedan hit the surprise ramp, it caught a full foot of air before landing back on the ground with an ungainly thump.
While the Corolla was never built to take jumps, it nevertheless appears to have survived the stunt without suffering major damage. As seen in the video, the drivers following were fortunate enough to have more time to react. Cars coming from behind gingerly worked their way over the surprise obstacle without the airborne antics.
There was a degree of luck involved in catching the shot. “When I went back to get a front angle of cars going over the smaller buckle, the road exploded and rose over 18 inches, sending a car airborne,” Blackwell told media outlet Storyful.
Siemers Drive wasn’t the only road to face issues, either. With temperatures approaching 100 degrees on the weekend, the city of Cape Girardeau reported that another road had also buckled in the hot conditions. Road crews will be pleased to note that temperatures are expected to ease towards this weekend, remaining below 90 degrees for much of the following week.
Video captured by KFVS12 shows just how severe the buckle was. Where the concrete has expanded and pushed up from the ground, it stands well over 12 inches above the surrounding roadway. It would be an almost perfect ramp if not for the fact that commuter cars don’t handle airtime particularly well.
KFVS12 managed to capture repair efforts on Monday. Road crews used asphalt to replace the damaged section, restoring a smooth, continuous surface without any surprise jumps.
Public roads are intentionally designed to withstand typical weather conditions, be they heat, cold, rain, wind, or snow. Still, every so often, high heat can deliver some unwelcome surprises. One minute, you’re driving your Corolla to the store; the next, you’re doing a Streets of San Francisco. Stay safe out there, and watch out for any more surprise pop-up ramps as the roads get warm this summer.
Image credits: FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul via YouTube screenshot
I’ve never seen it on a road, but this sort of buckling happens all the time on sidewalks and curbs here in New Mexico.
LOL, why didn’t the driver just stop? It looked like they had plenty of space to brake but it doesn’t look like they even slowed down. Did they even put their phone down after they landed?
If they could even see it, they had less than a second, so no, and they’re probably better off for it as braking into that could have possibly caused more damage to the undercarriage. I jumped a rusty old Subaru like that a number of times and that was fine.
Ask 100 people to list hazards to be prepared for and see if a single person has “road spontaneously turns into a ramp” on their list. Our brains are not great at reacting to situations we’ve never experienced or cannot immediately comprehend. Most people who experience trauma (wake up to a house on fire, cut their finger off with a saw, etc) report they stared stupidly for a bit until their brain could process what they were seeing. Give this driver a break.
I think you meant to reply to CC as I’m defending the driver. Even if that person was hyperaware (in a Corolla!), they’d have to have superhuman reflexes to respond at all, then the car would take a moment to react, and then it would have hammered that ramp at a downward angle of attack, smashed the front for sure, slid up over, then ground the entire undercarriage over the peak before the rear wheels would possibly kangaroo it up again or they’d catch on the peak doing who knows how much damage. This driver was probably a little shaken up with the car sustaining mostly superficial or unserious damage (I could be wrong, of course), but if they had been able to brake, I think it would have been a lot worse for the car.
My bad — yes I was replying to the OP.
Well put. Sometimes holding the wheel straight and just staying in control is good enough.
YOLO
And all I can hope is that their insurance company damn well better not give them any trouble to pay for any repairs.
The case where the excuse “it came out of nowhere” is true. I hope the Toyota driver gets the footage.
The “it jumped out in front of me” is a bit of a running joke between my wife and I. Her brother is just about a year younger than her and so once he got his license they had to share the extra vehicle in the family. Well he went to the drive-in one night and the next morning my wife found a nice scrape down one side. When she confronted him, he of course claimed it wasn’t his fault that the pole just jumped out in front of him. Of course I found out that is his typical attitude, it is not his fault that he isn’t paying attention.
Just the Kazokus of Girardeau flattenin’ the hills in their General Li.
If you are familiar with Metro Detroit, then you have, for sure, heard about Kirk In The Hills. If you aren’t, it’s this faaannnn-a-aaancy little neighborhood. In fact, the Penske’s had a place in there at one point.
Anyway, there used to be a little “hump bridge” near the entrance that me and my friends may or may not have jumped multiple times a night in a Geo Tracker. Was it dangerous? Fuck yeah, lol.
Kid stuff 🙂
Here it is on a map if you wanna see how some of Detroit’s “big shots” live. I gotta give them credit, it’s nice. (Although there are better lakes)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kirk+in+the+hills+bloomfield+mi&atb=v314-1&iaxm=maps
Before this was regraded and a 4 way stop was installed in the early 2000’s, if you were heading east on Speedway at 55-60MPH the road acted like a ramp but then perfectly sloped away afterwards so you’d get about 8″ of air but have the smoothest landing. Anything my friends and I could get a hand on we’d jump there, from a Cadillac land barge, to an Aerostar, to a pickup truck. We eventually started riding in the bed of the truck to experience weightlessness, then cranked up our stupidity by putting things like discarded washing machines in the back just to watch them hover in mid-air. https://maps.app.goo.gl/dJ3Lqw6YCcpnCZNy5
Being young and dumb was so much fun…
Funess(t) Dr and Hopt on Ln are some cherry on the cake names! lol.
Yeah, riding in the bed of a Ford Ranger, doing 95mph down the Lodge to JLA to see our good friend play Midget Majors hockey games (and sneaking into the suites to steal from the fridges) is a great memory. Also, driving through the Cass Corridor blasting GnR just to piss off the Gangsters, when that was clearly a bad idea, was hilarious at the time. 🙂
Ahh, to be old enough to do just enough dumb shit and not really cross the line, meanwhile being young enough that you couldn’t get into “real trouble” is kinda a gold point in being a teenager.
If this was in England, they’d say the Sleeping Policeman just woke up.
And for my next trick….
I saw this the other day and really it is hilarious – the driver is lucky the speed limit wasn’t that high. It’s like a surprise mario kart obstacle just comes out of nowhere. The Toyota driver is lucky that someone caught this on film – will make it much easier to file an insurance claim if their car was damaged.
I’ll admit that my city’s speed humps are a little aggressive, but this is ridiculous.
I had the same thing happen about 20 years ago in the Ikea parking lot in Tempe, AZ. It looked the same as these pictures but was obscured by heatwaves coming off the concrete. The car took to the air and landed with enough force to do something leaky to the radiator. Fortunately it was a rental and Enterprise had a depot right around the corner. Since the car was a PT Cruiser, I figured it was a mercy killing.
Agreed about the PT Cruiser. It needed killing. They and the Chevy HHR need killing.
I must just be an asshole, but that made me laugh.
My wife emailed me a link to the video on IG with the subject line, “Wheeeeeeee!” I must have watched it a dozen times, laughing harder and harder.
I’m sure an enterprising Ford dealer will run an ad campaign suggesting that drivers need “proper trucks” for the roads rather than small cars which might get
swallowed wholetossed aside.And I’m sure nary a peep about the public paying for proper infrastructure.
File under: Perfectly Documented Insurance Claim. 🙂
If there was enough damage that is.
Someone tell the city the RC car track should be in a corner of a park, not on a public road.
That video is missing a Waylon Jennings voice-over and the Dukes of Hazzard theme.
Scroll down 😉
The best part of any Dukes of Hazzard jump was when Roscoe tried it a few seconds later…
You mean Roscoe P. Coltrane?
The very same.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike concrete over asphalt. I know it can go longer between repairs, so there are economic reasons, but I always thought resistance to heat was one of its strong suits (which is why concrete slab roads are more common in the southwest?).
Maybe the expansion joint wasn’t big enough, who knows….and also maybe a layer or two of asphalt on top, which is what some of our local politicians do in election years because it makes them look good for “fixing” the roads, then nobody has to answer for the chunks of asphalt coming off later because asphalt doesn’t like being placed over expansion joints because the two materials have very different flexibility and heat tolerance.
I’m far from an engineer, this is just what I’ve observed. Any civil people around here? Engineering, not politeness. 🙂
Asphalt patches on concrete are the worst. This road now needs a serious rebuild or else new asphalt every 2 months. Not spending money now means higher costs later.
Do tell! My town is almost always in road construction season, and they’re promulgating the myth that asphalt over concrete will make the roads last longer…
I’d also like to see an engineer’s opinion. My guess is that they spec expansion joints and maybe road thickness by historic temperature range. I imagine it would be tougher to engineer roads in climates with wider temperature ranges to account for as things that work best in hot climates might not work as well when it’s cold.
It’s a big problem in the UK right now with the railways. Temperatures are climbing to the very upper range of what the expansion provisions were designed for.
Edit: RR lines are welded, so they don’t have expansion joints to, well, expand. I literally saw a video about that a while ago!
I also wonder if the expansion joints could get clogged- if they fill with sand or gravel they’ll hard stack much sooner and not allow enough expansion. Course that brings up the question of if you have to vacuum your expansion joints occasionally…
It looks like a very thin concrete slab. When you see them preparing roads now, be it asphalt, concrete, or concrete below asphalt, they are laying down 2 feet of material. It was shocking to see when they were widening a main artery just outside PHL and the amount of dirt/subsurface they dug out before repaving. The driveway entrances became 2 foot high curbs
Joints for concrete pavements are more for controlling where the slab cracks than expansion. In fact, many concrete pavement joints have dowel bars across them so that the slabs settle together if there’s any movement.
True expansion joints are typically limited to where bridges meet the pavement on solid ground, since the expansion of metal in the heat is magnitudes greater than plain concrete.
Raptor owners in shambles over this sweet jump being removed.
Wow Dad! You must have flown like 50 yards!
Not something to be proud of Rusty….50 yards….
I wanna fly like an eagle,
down the street,
Fly like an eagle,
road has buckled from the heat
You got, like, three feet of air that time
Narrator “The Toyota was not, in fact, grounded to the ground.”
Saved by zero….gravity
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
All I need is some big heat wave
And some poorly built roadway
They may not have been Ready but they sure were Set to Go over that ramp.
Take that Clueless Woman from the Commercial!
Well done
Now y’all are probably wondering right about now how this Corolla is gonna turn out. She’s may have a reputation for durability, but nobody expected this road to buckle even bigger than the one on my belt. Guess we’ll have to find out next week. ♪ Just some low-taxed towns ♪ never fixin’ the streets. Our infrastructure rots away while those Washington clowns, they all grift and f*ck around and find some new ways to cheat….♪♪
Well it was about that time those Duke boys realized they were in a heap of trouble.
YEEEHAWWWW
Wow! I’m surprised the airbags didn’t deploy with that hit.