Rolling a car on the motorway

[Peanut Gallery]

This guy did not roll, but came close - from the dascham thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38lgqQfKNwg

[zedx19]

Watched someone roll an old Honda Accord years back, he was in L3 clearly not paying attention, got incredibly close to the barrier then must have woke up, swerved away causing the car to oversteer, he corrected twice before it snapped out of control, then across all 3 lanes, up the embankment where it dug in sideways and rolled. I stopped and went to check on the driver, who was awake and seemed ok but covered in those Mini Roll cake things, loads everywhere. Turns out he was trying to munch through a Mini Roll, hence not paying attention. Up until that point I always wondered how someone can roll a car on a straight road, turns out the answer is Mini Rolls, damn you Mr Kipling.

[jamieduff1981]

Peanut Gallery said:

This guy did not roll, but came close - from the dascham thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38lgqQfKNwg

What that video is is a lesson in treating large vehicles as lethal things you never want beside you. Even the drivers who aren't stupid have massive blind spots and it's best to assume the driver is one of the stupid ones who even if they previously saw you, have forgotten you were there.

Never let a HGV or a bus/coach drive beside you.

[ATG]

Rebew said:

So its actually quite easy then judging by those youtube clips, I always thought you'd have to be really trying to get a car on to its roof but it seems not that hard at all to make them fall over!

To roll a car over you only need to raise its centre of gravity by about a metre, so if you're driving along and have enough momentum to allow the car to coast up a one metre high slope, then you've also got enough momentum to roll the car onto its roof if you ride up a bank or clip a curb just right.

[Rebew]

bristolracer said:

Rebew said:

On the M5 this morning I got stuck in a jam for about half an hour

Somebody had a far worse morning than you did

You are traveling at 32 m second in a ton plus weight. That's a lot of energy,and when it goes off track it won't end well.

Just hope the occupants are ok, it's not a nice way to crash

I wasn't complaining about having to wait, I just put that in for context. From the look of the car and how quickly it took them to clear it i assumed that the occupants were relatively okay, however I am aware that it would never be much fun to be tumbling down the motorway at 70 mph on your roof. Luckily the A pillar and bonnet seemed to take the brunt of the impact. I was more interested in the physics behind getting a car onto its roof in the first place.

[Ransoman]

I put it as a combination of the following:

Poor quality or defective tyres.
Mechanical fault or poorly maintained vehicle
Road surface contamination
Poor awareness of road condition and other users.
Rubbish car.

[Rebew]

Ransoman said:

I put it as a combination of the following:

Poor quality or defective tyres.
Mechanical fault or poorly maintained vehicle
Road surface contamination
Poor awareness of road condition and other users.
Rubbish car.

I can confirm that the road was pretty grimy and the car was a peugeot 206 so two of those are definitely right and the rest are highly likely.

[Morningside]

Dunno. But my ex girlfriend managed to jump the central reservation barrier on the A12 near Chelmsford many years ago.

Not much fun crash landing in the outer lane of the on coming traffic.

[Dr Jekyll]

A traffic cop was telling me about a car vs motorbike incident he was called to in an urban street in West London. Several witnesses estimated the bikes speed at well over 70, after all the car it had hit was overturned by the impact. It turned out the bike was a restricted moped incapable of exceeding 30, it had just hit the car at exactly the angle to turn it over.

[smileymikey]

Rebew said:

Ransoman said:

I put it as a combination of the following:

Poor quality or defective tyres.
Mechanical fault or poorly maintained vehicle
Road surface contamination
Poor awareness of road condition and other users.
Rubbish car.

I can confirm that the road was pretty grimy and the car was a peugeot 206 so two of those are definitely right and the rest are highly likely.

Yep I got caught up in that crash as well, near Burnham. Funnily enough an identical Silver 206 had spun ending up facing North on the Southbound in pretty much the same spot last week. I dont know why but the M5 goes decidedly dodgems on that stretch.

[anonymous-user]

A car ended up on its roof in a 30mph section of roadworks on the Humber Bridge several months ago The inside lane was closed, with some concrete blocks protecting the main towers. These blocks had a 'ramp' at their start, which someone must have gone up on their nearside wheels - flipping over in a 'Dukes of Hazzard' manner a little later!