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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Level of surprise that this is in Texas: less than zero. I can’t even get in and out of Mom’s neighborhood scrape-less without going at an angle because this entire state lets its roads go to hell nowadays.
No double dipping:
TIMMY: Did…did you just double-dip that chip?
GEORGE: Excuse me?
TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!
GEORGE: “Double-dipped”? What are you talking about?
TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.
GEORGE: So…?
TIMMY: That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip – just take one dip and end it!
Outside of my work there is a bus stop. From the apartment complexes behind it, there is a ~car wide asphalted road, or rather, a walkway, feeding into the sidewalk. The reason it’s not a road, is because on the other side of the sidewalk is an ordinary curb, about 15 cm high. I thought it was a weird design from the first time I saw it. Not a week later I hear a scrape as I waited for the bus, and lo and behold! A nice Audi E Tron fell victim to the drop. I could feel the drivers surprise, panic, and then the sad acceptance as they slowly drove off.
Sorry, I quit after hearing the same ‘scrape’ pasted over the first video over and over and over again.
I put my hand upon the grip
Nine and three we hit da dip
I hear the sound of metal rip
Torn an underbody strip
All right, y’all!
I regret that I have but one like to bestow upon this comment.
Freak Nasty is just the modern Burma Shave. They should have signs leading up to it!
This is nothing compared to the (locally infamous) Milwaukee Roundabout! Sadly dormant for a while but enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/@MilwaukeeRoundabout/videos
I had no idea there was a camera watching that roundabout! I’ll try to see if I make the cut next time I drive through it 🙂
The intersection by my childhood home had an even worse version of this. It was a 2 lane road crossing a main 5 lane road. The 5-lane road had such a crown it was amazing (for water runoff I assume). And the 2 lane cross-road came into it at a downward angle from the east. Anything more then 10 MPH and you were scraping something. The road was 25mph and most people did 35 so it was just amazing. Even full size trucks would bottom out in the back (their hitch receiver usually) especially if they had a trailer. It would literally dig chunks out of the pavement.
For probably a decade I remember my dad slowing to 5-10mph when crossing that street. when they finally re-did the entire intersection and removed it I remember being mildly disappointed.
Same intersection I totaled my first car. Good times.
I got a rare green light years ago on Man O War in Lexington, KY crossing Nicholasville or one of the other ‘spokes’ and went for it…my ’85 Caprice with 20 year old shocks bottomed the fuck out because I was NOT expecting all of the ramps and dips. My friend and I laughed our asses off.
There’s quite a dip entering the ballfield parking lot at my kid’s school. I was late picking up from practice (so late the coach called me) so I barreled into the lot with the Impala and bottomed out pretty hard. Noticed days later the radiator started leaking.
When I was kid there was a big bump on the road to slow down traffic but it was huge, almost every car scratched hard. I used to sit at the front of the house and look all the cars losing pieces. There were multiple occasions where cars got stuck and neighbors had to come out to push the cars lol also our street flooded bad and during those rainy days people will forget about that bump and it was worst haha the city then decided to remove it completely 🙁
I need to set up a camera on the one outside my house at some point. It’s not quite this bad, but it’s close. The dip’s got some seriously deep gouges on the uphill/exit side. I swear one of these days I’m going to go out there and see a bumper or an entire oil pan sitting in the road.
Wait till your dirt road has lots of these because once a year the concrete section lets the dry river beds run water across the dirt road w/o washing out.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me appreciate the first generation Mazda CX-5’s 8″ of ground clearance. Almost anything can do it, I sacrificed a chunk of cooling fin from my motorcycles oil pan to sidewalk slab
The house I grew up in had a big dip out front. It was a block away from a major intersection and cars would come flying down our street to avoid the congestion with no stop sign or warning. To me it was just daily background noise hearing the screeching of tires and the subsequent “ka-pow!” Sometimes with a bunch of rattling metal in the street as result of the aftermath. One day while I was doing important kid stuff in the front yard, a fast car hit it good, and pieces flew all over the place. I thought: cool, that must be the gears and sprockets that make cars work! It wasn’t until I was almost a teen that the city finally put a stop sign up and the awesome noises went bye-bye. This article got me reminiscing of my childhood. Thanks.
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).
I imagine they can’t see the dip immediately past the ridge. From above it would look just like a normal grade break, but then drivers don’t see the dip on the other side until it’s too late. Piss poor traffic design.
/Spouse of a civil engineer who can’t help but analyze traffic infrastructure when we travel.
‘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.
Even worse than this is the neighborhood HOAs that decide to riddle their streets with the steepest, shortest, most poorly signed speed bumps out of pure spite. There’s several neighborhoods near me that I only cut through when accidents or traffic blocks the main roads because the speed bumps are absolutely diabolical. I get wanting to slow traffic in a residential road, but if the speed limit is 20 and I have to crawl through the whole development at 8 mph in my CX-30 to avoid that scraping, it’s unacceptable.
The neighborhood one of my best friends lives in is like this. I meet up at his house to cruise to cars and coffee during the summer, and my VERY low classic bug can barely make it to his house without hitting the beam and bottom of the pan about a half dozen times on the stupid, giant speed humps. Angling doesn’t even help.
Pretty sure I’d have to angle over them even in my Crosstrek.
Fuck HOAs in general.
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.
Its already here. My kids had white boards in their classrooms before smart boards started being added and my oldest is 30.
My office now has an electronic white board. Not sure what the advantage is over a typical white board – we still print out our favorite memes and tape them to the board.
In a few years? I’m in my mid 30s and I never had a chalkboard in school besides one or two beat up small boards still bouncing around. Only cartoons informed me about the sound of nails on chalkboard, even the kid toy chalkboards of the time didn’t have that quality to them when we attempted to replicate the effect.
Heck, my high school had white boards *mumble* years ago. I would guess there are plenty of people in their 30s who have never had the pleasure of hearing fingernails on a chalkboard.
I’m about to be thirty and we still had chalkboards in all but the newly renovated classrooms up until highschool. It was only when I was in highschool that they replaced some of the chalkboards with SMART boards, which I always had to help the teachers with.