By Ryan C. Christiansen
You know the guy, the one who stacks all of his belongings into the open box of his pickup truck and then drives 80 miles per hour down the interstate. No, he doesn’t have tools or feed and seed in there; he’s got a mattress stacked on top of chairs on top of open tubs filled with pots and pans. The mattress is shaking like it’s never known, and he’s on his way to his new girlfriend’s place, or maybe he’s running away from the last one-or both. Either way, he’s a perfect candidate for leaving behind what the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety dubs “vehicle-related road debris,” or VRRD, for short, and you’re just waiting for the moment when you can yell, “There it goes!” but you’d rather just get around him and leave him behind (if he wasn’t going so darned fast).
The AAA Foundation says even a small item can be dangerous when it’s released at highway speeds, especially when it causes drivers to make erratic maneuvers. And while road debris is the cause of less than one-half of one percent of all vehicle crashes, it still claims around 80 to 90 lives per year, which is 80 to 90 souls too many.
Categorically, blown-out tires are the type of debris that you see most often on the highway, especially retreads, which are used tires that have had old tread buffed away to have new rubber put on. Retreads are cheaper than new tires and so large-scale operations like trucking companies use them a lot. A report by the Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Associations confirms that most tire debris comes from trucks (64 percent), but according to the Tire Retread & Repair Information Bureau, it’s not retreads so much as “tire abuse,” including under-inflation and overloading that cause most retreaded tires to blow out.
Tires only account for 25 percent of all debris that hits the road each year, however. Other items include metal and plastic automotive parts, which account for about 8 percent of the litter. The next time you see Johnny Cash’s brother driving the car that he built “One Piece at a Time,” you know, his “’60, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70 automobile,” you can thank him.
Almost 40 percent of road debris, however, comes from uncovered loads, like that guy hauling his stuff to his girlfriend’s house.
So who cleans up all that stuff after it hits the road, anyway? According to Sgt. Jesse Grabow of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, road debris, including VRRD and other non-fixed objects, such as road kill, are typically pulled off the lanes onto shoulders by state troopers or other law enforcement. They then have dispatchers contact the Department of Transportation for permanent removal.
To report road debris, motorists should call either the State Patrol (911) or the district DOT office, said Dana Casey Hanson, a public affairs officer for MnDOT District 4 out of Detroit Lakes. “Motorists should not attempt to remove debris themselves,” she advised, because crews are generally within 20 miles of any given location, she said.
In North Dakota, where crews are a little more spread out, motorists might be a little more tempted to take care of the issue themselves. “If it’s a low-volume road and if they can do it safely, that’s great,” said Brad Darr, the director of the maintenance division at the North Dakota Department of Transportation. “But if it’s a safety issue,” he said, “it’s best to call 911 and let law enforcement know. We all have flashing lights on our vehicles and so it’s best if we do it.”
In many parts of the country, the highway departments spend time daily removing debris from the road and hauling it to the landfill, AAA said, but in more rural areas, it’s not as big of a problem-except for maybe in western North Dakota, where traffic related to oil drilling and hauling has increased the amount of road debris, said Darr. “There are a lot more debris out there and a lot more truck traffic,” he said. Truck drivers are losing sand and gravel from their trucks, he said, because “new truck drivers are out there who don’t know how to operate trucks as well.”
The time of year plays a role, too, in the type of debris that hits the road. “In the fall, we tend to see more sugar beets and mud from harvest time,” Hanson said, “and in summer, there tends to be more debris from boats, such as life jackets.”
Of course, humans aren’t totally responsible for road debris. Mother Nature has her hand in the problem, too. Sometimes, she sends critters scurrying across the roadway into the paths of oncoming vehicles. That’s when you can cue up “Dead Skunk (in the middle of the road)” by Loudon Wainwright. Other times, Mother Nature drags violent storms across the prairie or she works up a flood-or several. In long-suffering areas like Devil’s Lake, for example, the DOT uses snowplows to kick logs and rocks off the roadway, Darr said.
Most often, however, humans are the ones responsible for messing up the road. The next time you feel like one of the Beverly Hillbillies and you’re on the move cross-country, remember to tie things down and take it easy, because nobody wants to stop and pick up that vinyl-cushioned toilet seat that you left behind.