There are a lot of manhole covers on the first section of my drive to work, and I commknly see people swerving all over the road just so their tires won’t touch them, even jeeps. Why?
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At least up north around where I live manhole covers are often also either holes or bumps in the road due to things shifting around from the freeze/thaw cycles. Basically potholes with a purpose. Hitting bumps is bad for your car, so that’s a pretty good reason to avoid them. Though I’d never swerve around a bump if I was going to come close to someone else, since that’s much more dangerous.
My favorite people are those who drive giant SUVs with huge tires lifted way off the ground who do this and also slow down to 2MPH to go over train tracks.
I was about to comment just right this.
Huge tyres? Or huge rims.
Skinny tires on huge rims and a lift kit will self destruct pretty quickly. Pavement princess trucks are considerably less capable, ironically.
Huge tires, not rims. I get the big rim idiots babying their purchases. I’m talking about regular SUV tires.
The funny part is that going slower makes the bump worse. Your shocks need to compress to work.
No. Slowing may make the bump feel worse to you )unless you do it right) while still being less strain on your suspension
No, you want your suspension to compress. That’s it’s job. But you want it to start compressing as it’s hitting the bump so it drops down on the other side instead of the whole car dipping.
And I’m not talking about going over it at 50mph. A lot of speed bumps will have a suggested speed posted near or are designed for the posted speed limit. And I’m talking about the people who are basically idling over the bump.
In my city, they just keep paving over the old asphalt, so the manhole covers are like 6 inches deep in some places. Hitting one of those in my sedan is not pleasant.
Because it feels horrible to drive over and if they’re bad enough you can crack your rim on them
As others have said, it’s just not great for the car. Will it damage it if you hit one? Probably not. But if it’s your work route or other commonly taken route, you’re gonna hit it 260x in a year, and you’ll own the car for multiple years. It adds up quick. Plus, they aren’t always smooth to the ground or free of other pot holes and square edges. If you hit it hard enough or if it’s too sharp, jagged, or deep, you can damage the wheel, the suspension, and the tire itself, easily in the thousands of dollars to repair, along with not having a vehicle for up to a few weeks.
Don’t get me wrong, they shouldn’t really be swerving all over the road, but dodging em when you can is nice.
In addition to frequently being a dip in the road, there are two on my way to work that make a clunking noise when I go over them and I don’t like it. This has lead to a habit where I just avoid them in general.
I don’t expect them to fail, it is just the noise and bumping feeling.
I drive a small car with stiff (sport) suspension. In my area manhole covers typically aren’t aligned well with the road surface making them quite bumpy to drive over. This can jarring and even painful for me due to medical issues that I don’t care to get into here. So I routinely avoid driving over manhole covers.
I find the name manhole to be sexist and I prefer the term personhole.
I would try to avoid driving over them when safely possible, because they make an annoying noise, which I wanted to spare folks living nearby from. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i unconsciously avoid sidewalk grates also. fear of falling forever ig
Tell me, what alignment is your car?
Chaotic neutral.
As someone who opens them regularly, because so many of the chimneys are collapsing and I regularly wonder how some haven’t caved in yet.
I’ve witnessed a failure like this once but it took a sunken brick crosswalk where we get frost heave into a U-shape with a flat manhole cover in the middle of one lane to get driven over for a couple years until one day the lip under the cover was so busted up it flipped the lid right out when my mom drove over it lol.
I was in Oklahoma one time and I opened a lid on a road and the whole lid fell in because the frame broke as I opened it. City was just kinda like “yeah that happens” and I’m like wtf do you mean that happens?!?! Their system was very very fucked though lol
Around here the chimneys are fine and the road around them has sunk so they stick up a couple inches above the road surface.
Maybe you and they are on opposite sides of the world so, when the chimneys sink on their side, the counterparts on your side are pushed out.
Why do I feel good when I avoid stepping on the pavement cracks?
After freezing temperatures, construction, and deferred maintenance, manhole covers can be a damaging obstruction
My car is only two years old, and the one time it needed work …. I hit one of the smaller pieces of road infrastructure - a gas valve maybe. But the pavement was broken up around it so it was a deep hole with a sharp metal edge. It destroyed my tire, a damn expensive tire
Edit to add: for my older car I just had to spend $1,500 replacing a control arm and ball joint. While there’s no way to identify a specific cause, trying to avoid obstructions is a possibility I can control
