I spent a good chunk of the morning across the river at the Honda dealership, because of this:
That’s the nail that they pulled out of my right rear tire, which had developed a slow leak late last week. It was one of those leaks that took several hours to significantly reduce the pressure, and I had stuff to do yesterday, so I’ve been pumping it back up with a compressor that I keep in the car.
Happily, it was in an easy to patch place, so the whole thing only cost me $27. And the shape of the end is sort of interesting, so I got a photo of the day shot out of it, too. I needed to prop it up on something, and the Lego piece seemed thematically appropriate…
When I lived in Chicago, one of the advantages of a big city was the large number of little used tire shops all over which also did tire repair. $6 for a plug or $10 for a patch, and the best part was you were in and out in a matter of minutes.
My first thought was to go to the garage around the corner, which probably would’ve been cheaper, but on the off chance that it might turn out to be a material failure that would be covered by warranty (since I bought this car in July), I took it to the dealership.
Been there, done that, the most recent one costing me $100 for a new tire (it couldn’t be patched) on a vehicle that was less than a month old, and also costing the world the embodied energy & resources in the nearly-new tire that couldn’t be repaired.
That however, wasn’t as bad as the over-the-handlebars bicycle accident @ 15 years ago from a random chunk of concrete in the road. Fortunately the worst of it was a rather impressive scrape on each arm, but today that would mean risk of antibiotic resistant bugs.
These kinds of debris come from “somewhere.” The “somewhere” is almost always a truck with a load bed that is not covered, so little bits & bobs just bounce out and end up on the road, where they become safety hazards to other motorists and cyclists alike. On the highway, the loose bits can fly into the windshields of other vehicles, causing cracked glass that’s expensive to replace, and sometimes causing accidents.
So:
It’s the 21st century.
Trucks have had covered bodies since the early 20th century.
It’s time to make that “the law” in every state’s motor vehicle code: absolute requirement for a solid cover or a tarp over every loose load, no exceptions, and a moving violation for carrying a loose uncovered load. That will do away with the vast majority of those dangerous bits of debris we encounter on the roads.
As for broken glass on the street, when it comes from an auto accident where the police are called, the police should be able (and should always) call a sweeper to pick it up. When it comes from some jackass tossing a bottle on the street, that kind of littering should be treated seriously because the “litter” is an overt hazard to others.
General principles: a) No externalized costs. (Truck owners should not inflict the costs of loose debris on others.) b) Civilized behavior. (Littering is selfish and unacceptable.)