Soft Landing

davamb · Postby **davamb** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:12 pm

Some clown had lost a sprung single mattress on the Monash tonight. Car in front of me sailed over it but flung it up so it hit poor old Bessie square in the nose at 100kph. I had nowhere to go and a big mutha truck right up my jacksie. Friggin thing jammed under the car but I managed to pull over into the centre strip and stop without hitting anything. Some bloke appeared out of nowhere to assist, but the mattress had gone under the car folded over so it was impossible to just drive off it. Managed to rip the mattress partly to bits and then jack up the rear so I could jam the bits under the rear wheel to get a bit more clearance. With a fair bit of backwards-and-forwards managed to slew the car sideways off the mattress. Guy that helped disappeared immediately after as I had my head down putting the jack away. Dunno if he was the guilty party or not, guess there'd be no way of proving it anyways. But if you're out there mate and innocent - thanks for the help. The guilty party - whoever it was - should hang their head in shame. I was lucky, really lucky. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. Will have to get Bessie up on the ramps to see if there's any under-body damage, but I expect it to be largely cosmetic. Not pleased, but think I got off lightly.

lizard · Postby **lizard** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:40 pm

I saw 4 kids one on red P in mums new Volvo purposely run over a mattress it got stuck caught on fire and burnt the vovo to the ground it was the funnest I have seen :mrgreen:

93_Clubman · Postby **93_Clubman** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:25 am

Sorry to hear Dave - glad you were able to get into the centre strip of the freeway without incident.

deviant · Postby **deviant** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:31 am

Very lucky it did not life your front wheels enough to not have steering control!

I once saw two big trucks following each other with about 4 foot between them and a bloke in a Lancer following behind that with even less of a following distance. An entire pallet fell off the front truck, exploded underneath the second truck and the remaining pieces shotgunned the front of this Lancer. The damage looked pretty bad. Bet he didn't tailgate another truck after that!

I also once saw someone towing a trailer with some garden furniture on it. A small cushion fell off and the guy behind panicked and literally threw his car off the road to avoid it.

I got a destroyed tyre a while back after following one of those skip carrying trucks around a corner where it shed a load of the rubbish that was in the skip on the back. The bloody thing was piled high with broken glass and I had no choice but to drive through it! Lucky I was in a rental so not my problem.

davamb · Postby **davamb** » Thu Feb 06, 2014 9:51 am

It took away most of my steering control Dev and I was real lucky to make it on to the centre divide!

Got the car up on ramps last night. Fair bit of melted foam enameled onto the cat. Lucky it didn't go up in flames, but then I guess a modern mattress should be constructed so as not to be inflammable. Lot of that black sound/rust protection removed off the undertray. Maybe the LHS rail damaged, is slightly concave and largely devoid of surface protection. Other than that, all looks ok. Not real happy about this, but still consider I got off lightly.

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Thu Feb 06, 2014 10:22 am

Are there any cameras on the section of road you were on? If there was think about rining the transport department explain to them what happened and they maybe able to review the footage and identify a vehicle carrying a mattress. You may be able to get the offending party at least a traffic fine etc and possibly find out if the helping stranger was in fact the offender.

Dann may not agree with using big brother technology, but if it is available use it!