Yesterday a car ended up on its roof on my road.
I didn't see it myself but a neighbour did - though he didn't see what happened, or notice what type of car it was.
I live on a dead straight bog standard suburban road - usually cars parked on both sides and room for single file traffic up the middle, with fairly regular gaps in the parked cars to allow passing.
So I'm baffled as to how a car could end up on its roof - how could it have happened and what kind of speed would it need to have been doing? I wandered up for a nose and apart from some glass there doesn't seem to be any other clues like skid marks.
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Perhaps it swerved at speed to avoid a cat, and hit a kerb?
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Perhaps it swerved at speed to avoid a cat, and hit a kerb?
Was it a 106 or a saxo then?
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If it was a 106 , Saxo, and don't forget Novas , it would have run over the hapless cat .
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Probably hit a kerb, I saw a smart car go over to 45 degrees just by clipping a kerb of a traffic signal island with the rear wheel as it went round a corner normally. It was very surprising for me to see.
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If I may be permitted to ask a related question . . .
Is it easier to turn a car over if the suspension has been tuned for ride comfort rather than handling?
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Just missed some Clio aerobatics a month or so ago. since had "just happened" I was caught right at the head of the que that formed behind so had plenty of time to study the marks on the road etc.
It was on a dual carriage way close to where I live (I was on my way home from work) and it appears that whilst driving around a gentle LH bend the Clio broke sharply (leaving a skid track from osf wheel for a couple of metres) and then rode up over the shallow kerb to the central reservation. Wheel tracks visible in the mud for a metre or so (without touching the barrier) then back down onto the road where there was another mark on the tarmac. A few metres further down the road was the Clio, standing on its wheels and facing the wrong way only with a big dent in the roof directly above the driver's head (must have been a barrel roll). It was raining too.
It appears that as the vehicle dropped back down on the road the osf wheel had bit hard into the surface providing enough friction to cause the vehicle to flip over.
Thankfully nobody was badly hurt and all 4 occupants from the car were up and about. That didnt stop the air ambulance from taking the driver away strapped to a backboard. It had to land on the road mind you (giving the trees a bit of a trim on the way down!!)
What was alarming was the presence of about 4 police vehicles on the scene right from the start (one of which was an unmarked Range Rover Sport). Were they being followed???
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> How easy to Roll a car?
Near on impossible in a Citroen 2CV apparantly. Remember several years ago on the now deceased satellite channel Screensport watching 2CV racing and there was a prize available for anyone that managed to roll one. The prize wasn't won.
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If anyone had managed to roll a 2CV, i doubt they would have been in much of a fit state to collect a prize anyway!
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I posted a query on this very point a few years ago, after witnessing the car ahead of me suddenly turn over on its roof for no obvious reason. It hadn't swerved or hit anything. It was doing a steady 40 on a wide smooth road.
The forum opinion was that the most likely cause was worn suspension combined with a momentary small swerve and correction, perhaps from falling asleep for a second. There were no tyre marks, nor any obvious mechanical failure. It sounds unlikely, except that I did actually witness it.
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What about that thread on 'automatics and the elderly' - she flipped it from a standing start within ten yards or so, didn't she?
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The cat swerve hypothesis sounds plausible as cats appear to outnumber humans round our way. (..gravel in garden...don't get me started...!!) But i guess that mechanical failures and freak accidents in automatics have to happen somewhere so could be that too.
Quite scary though that it is so easy to flip over. It's possible i guess to hit 50 or 60 but most cars travel up our road under 30mph because the canyon effect of parked cars makes it feel much quicker. Plus if it had been going much over 30 i'd have though that it would have had more momentum and hit other vehicles or even houses, apparantly it was quite a strange sight sitting there on it's roof because nothing else appeared to have been hit despite proximity of other cars.
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You can flip a car over at less than 30mph if you hit a kerb sideways.
I did it at about 45mph and saw sky-ground-trees-sky before coming to a halt the right way up. Don't know how many times it went over, but there wasn't a straight panel on it afterwards*
*No sky, ground or trees were harmed during the making of this post, nor, amazingly, was the poster.
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It must be quite difficult to roll a car because I've never done it even when young and foolish. Perhaps I am just too wimpish and mimsing to manage it. Happens quite a lot in the country. All those hedges and ditches and all that zider....
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modern cars are too fast for small minds lud, thats why they roll them,we neither had the speed or the inclination (no pun intended)
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Although actually om modern cars are far more stable and well-suspended than they used to be... remember the first Vauxhall Velox and Wyvern in the fifties? I bet they were easy to roll...
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but you know that a roll = pain so you let off the gas..............,the younguns think pain is crashing on a playstation game and losing,therefore they dont have the same type of fear as we had instilled unto us,
modern hospitals can do most things these days but go back even 20 years and most things were impossible.
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It was a 106 that rolled outside my house too! As simple as just clipping the kerb at the wrong angle from the look of it.
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I once rolled an Austin A35, (remember them?). It had an anti-roll bar on the front and a tiny wooden steering wheel (boy-racer!). I was picking up a pal in Nottingham Market Square, came down the road turned hard left , it gently tipped over and finished upside down in front of the left hand lion flanking the Council House steps! Embarrassing or what?
Turned the car the right way up - filled up with oil & drove off to Cadwell Park!.
Reported by a nosey bus driver (at 6:30 am!) and done for dangerous driving! £30 and some points. It gave me an excuse to change the colour of the car to BRG with yellow wheels - á la Team Lotus!
Ah!, the foolishness of youth!
Roger. (Costa del Sol, España)
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Do you mean you didn't have the head skimmed and bolt another SU on the engine while it was in the paint shop smallfish? And make sure you had a passenger weighing at least as much as you next time you made a hard left?
:o)
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but you know that a roll = pain so you let off the gas..............,the younguns think pain is crashing on a playstation game and losing,therefore they dont have the same type of fear as we had instilled unto us, modern hospitals can do most things these days but go back even 20 years and most things were impossible.
You mean they think: go out. Get ratted. Nick a motor. Do something so moronic even your mum wouldn't believe it. Be rescued from your richly deserved dungeon by 'a US security agency'. Undergo years of agony. End up as the $600m. man (bit of inflation since then). Become a celebrity, drive a Prius, go to parties with Victoria Beckham and the fellow in the rug who used to play the piano before he became successful and got a title and went in for buying flowers and writing recycled carp songs for no good reason. Get a life. Is that what you mean om? They should be so lucky.
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Sometimes very easy. Recently a lady was minding her own business driving down the one-way bit of our village at 10-15 mph. Line of parked cars on the left, high kerb on the right. Someone pulled out on the left and she swerved to avoid them - they carried on and hit her nearside rear, pushing car into kerb and rolling it. Due to restricted area is took the fire brigade some time to extract her and right the car - fortunately she was shaken but otherwise okay.
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Saw an interesting video the other day of an old type Range Rover being swerved at about 40 mph. Went right over onto it's roof. My dad had one and told me had the suspenders modified to stop it happening.
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My dad had one and toldme had the suspenders modified to stop it happening.
what did your mum have to say on the subject ;-)
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"...had the suspenders modified to stop it happening."
...just like one of my old girlfriends :-)
--
e Prof
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> How easy to Roll a car? Near on impossible in a Citroen 2CV apparantly. Remember several years ago on the now deceased satellite channel Screensport watching 2CV racing and there was a prize available for anyone that managed to roll one. The prize wasn't won.
When the 2CV was in production, citroen promised to replace your 2CV for free if yu accidentally managed to roll it.
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And when and if you got out of hospital.
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Apart from improvements in car and suspension design in the previous 40 years or so, there have been huge improvements in tyre technology too.
On skinny crossplies (5.20 x 10 on my first car ISTR) driving just seemed to be one long skid - but all very gentle, and easy to control - without enough grip to cause stability problems.
Today, 165 radials are considered a bit narrow on a car with "only" 60 BHP and a claimed top speed in excess of 100MPH, yet there is the opportunity for the things to dig in and trip the car up if you do something a bit untoward, as mentioned above.
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Regarding the 2cv, years ago when I first had one ( and before I got used to it) I almost overshot a left fork junction in Bradford and turned into it just a little faster ( later) than I would have normally in my previous car. The previous car, a Polo would have just turned OK , no drama.
The 2CV`s tyres *HOWLED* in protest at the turn, on a dry road and scared the life out of me.
No chance with standard tyres on a dry road, could one by turned over. Too little grip.
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To Another John H<
Thats what really puts me off 4 wheel drives, The wobbling high centre of gravity combined with those big fat tyres just waiting to dig in if the driver does an *emergency swerve* Sadly with many of the SUV * School run* drivers having no clue at all about the potential risks in this area compared with the wide track, low centre of gravity cars they had before.
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