If there’s any sound that induces serious cringing, it’s the nails-on-the-chalkboard of part of your car making contact with the ground. Sometimes it’s just the embarrassing result of a rust exhaust system finally having picked a date with destiny, sometimes it’s actually fine because you’re rock-crawling in an off-roader with a brace of skid plates, but most times, it’s bad news. Misjudging the terrain can make for an uncomfortable experience, as dozens of drivers have found out over one particularly gnarly dip.
Alright, maybe it’s a little bit more than just a dip. Judging by how scooped-out it is and its concrete construction, this feature at one residential intersection in Texas looks more like it’s intended to help manage stormwaters rather than simply slow down cars. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not effective at the latter task. It’s so severe, one social media user has decided to set up a camera to document the shenanigans.
Dubbed The Daily Scrape, compilations of drivers trying and failing to navigate this feature without making contact with the ground have racked up thousands of likes across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and it’s easy to see why. This obstacle isn’t just a test of approach and departure angle, it’s a test of breakover angle too. It looks tricker than most severe driveway entrances, so it’s unsurprising to see it catch so many drivers off-guard.
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While daytime shots aren’t exactly spectacular with the sound off, footage captured at night occasionally shows showers of sparks shooting off of underbodies as drivers likely grit their teeth, turn down their stereos, and contemplate their choices. Granted, the lowest parts on many cars these days are exhaust system components, so it’s not like every one of these cars is mashing its oil pan, but still. Not pleasant.
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It’s worth noting that the dip isn’t just an obstacle that exists to punish cars for riding low to the ground. In these compilations, you’ll find plenty of examples of stock SUVs grounding out over the dip, even if some of them could’ve avoided grounding out quite as hard if they had simply reduced their speed. I mean, there’s a Chevrolet Tahoe in this particular compilation, and it drags its front spoiler. It shouldn’t be that hard to avoid scraping in one of these, considering it’s essentially a half-ton truck with an SUV body.
Perhaps the most baffling phenomenon is the number of cars that make repeat appearances. For instance, you’d think that the driver of the white Lexus LS400 would try to angle over it a little bit more, but nope, time and time again its driver grounds it out. A bit of a shame when you consider how clean it looks up top.
The thing is, it’s entirely possible to inch through the dip with a bit of angle without audibly scraping. A grey F10 BMW 5 Series on the lowered factory sports suspension that came with the M Sport package makes this incredibly obvious, and that’s not a car with an especially short wheelbase. With a little bit of care, attention, and proactive planning, lots of cars could make it through this.
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While it’s possible that the road could be redesigned to eliminate this dip, considering how many people appear to run the stop sign, this depression in the road appears to function as a traffic calming function. There’s no replacement for driving according to the conditions of the road you’re on, so all it should take in a whole litany of cars is being more aware of topography.
(Photo credits: Instagram/The Daily Scrape)
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The Brits have a good onomatopoeic word for this: graunch.
Some of the Salt Lake City suburbs have this type of drainage. Sometimes you just forget and get yeeted.
Most of this stuff can be tackled with a pretty shallow angle even in a low (stock height) car, possibly not requiring the driver to slow down, but this particular one with a dip before the rise would require a much greater angle—like beyond a lane width—for some lower vehicles. Another thing to do if approaching perpendicular is to hammer it just before the rise, to get the front end up a little, particularly in the vehicles with softer suspension, though I’m not sure if that would be enough for a lower car. At any rate, this is poor infrastructure design, practically designed to cause damage. Traffic calming measures should make driving at higher than posted speeds to be unpleasant in some way, not damaging (excepting those driving really excessively fast beyond the expected range of “normal” speeding).
There are a lot of these type dips on St. Johns. They even have road signs indicating a dip. Almost all of them have letters added to give them names like “Sheep Dip”, “Crab Dip” and my favorite “Stinky Donkey Dip”.
Just wanted to pop in and state that I think “Skronck” is the wrong term for bottoming out.
Yo mama mia I disagree with your onomatopoeia.
I’d like to see footage from inside a car to understand how hard the dip is to spot/judge. It’s also clearly bad design given even SUVs are taking a beating on it at relatively low speeds. Still amusing seeing the repeat offenders though.
Having recently purchased a relatively low-slung full-size saloon car I’m realising my judgement of certain speed bumps and dips needs a little recalibration. The worst was on a large bump that doubles as a pedestrian crossing at my local Red Rooster, the car scraped on the breakover which was just heart-wrenching and not something I thought I’d need to worry about.
Probably chalk that up as another reason why a lot of people prefer SUVs these days – especially where suburban roads are crap/badly designed (like in Australia).
‘Why do you need ground clearance?’
Shit like this. Do not underestimate the ability for roads to be fucked up by someone, even when brand new. I should be able to do the the posted speed limit without damaging my car due to poor road design.
I just realized that in a few short years there’s an entire group of people who will not know what that means or what that sound is thanks to the adoption of SMART boards and projector keyboards in schools.