If you live on a farm in Western Canada, odds are there is a gravel road going past your driveway. While gravel makes for a functional road surface, it’s a little hard on vehicles. Tires that log most of their miles on gravel don’t last as long as those run over pavement. Paint and windshields also take a beating.
Although that kind of damage is inevitable, events of last week reminded me that if more drivers exercised a little common sense on the road, our trucks and cars wouldn’t suffer as much abuse as they do. I’m beginning to think it may be time to add a few lessons on gravel road etiquette to the provincial driver training curriculum.
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A few extra questions on the Saskatchewan driver’s exam about how to drive on gravel roads wouldn’t go amiss. I’m thinking of something like this: “How hard does a rock thrown from the tire of a speeding pickup strike the windshield of an oncoming vehicle?”
To calculate that, students would need to use the force = mass x velocity formula. But I suggest the examiner could accept a more practical answer. Something simple like, hard enough to ruin it.
In the last few years, stones thrown from speeding pickup trucks have taken a toll on the windshields of my vehicles. Even with insurance, it has cost me a lot of money. I know I’m not the only one in that boat.
On one occasion, a speeding half ton pulling an empty flatdeck trailer raced over the crest of a hill toward me. The trailer was fishtailing wildly. I braked hard to try and save the windshield in my F-250, but to no avail. The trailer threw a rock that knocked a fist size chunk off the inner layer of glass. When I arrived at my destination, I had to brush windshield fragments off my lap.
Just two weeks after I replaced that windshield—at my own expense—I met a lifted four-by-four pickup that had to be travelling about 130 K.P.H. His oversized tires fired a fastball that struck the bottom edge of the new windshield, which caused the usual rosebud, But within 20 minutes the rosebud sprouted a 10-inch crack, making a glass repair impossible. Since then, the battered windshield on the F-250 has amassed an impressive collection of wounds. Sooner rather than later I’ll have to replace it again.
But if you don’t have a windshield in front of you, meeting a vehicle that is travelling at high speeds on a gravel road can be even more nerve racking. This fall I was bringing my pull-type swather back home hitched behind my open-station tractor. A large truck went by me without slowing down. The road had just been gravelled and the surface had a deep layer of loose stones. The tires flung a hail of rocks past me on both sides as I covered my face with both arms. Fortunately, none of them hit me.
Getting back to last week, I was on my way home in my brand new vehicle, which had less than 400 kilometres on the odometer. As I came over a rise there it was: another lifted four-by-four pickup coming toward me. It was under the control of a driver who appeared to be trying to set a gravel-road speed record. And he was doing it shortly after the municipality had covered the road with a lot of loose gravel because freezing rain had left a layer of ice on the surface.
I was down to less than 40 K.P.H. When he went past me, but I could see the rock coming. It hit my pristine windshield squarely in front of my eyes leaving a four-inch circle of damage, ruining my eight-day-old glass.
The frustrating part of all of this is drivers could easily help reduce the problem, and keep my glass repair costs down, by implementing two apparently uncommon practices: first, apply a little common sense when behind the wheel. And second, show a little common courtesy to others on the road. The windshields they save may be their own.
Scott
