Road eats car

This car fell into a massive hole that suddenly opened up on a busy road between the towns of Woking and Chertsey in Surrey, England. A busted water main caused the road collapse. From an onlooker quoted in GetSurrey News:

"There's a car which has been absorbed into the road, it just went in.

"The road's had it, they are going to have to dig the whole road up.

"Apparently a woman was driving along and heard a noise so she got out of her car to check it, and that's when it happened."

"Burst water main leaves gaping hole in A320" (via Fortean Times)

• [nixiebunny]

  Time for the risk management folks to get involved.

  I once got to see water bubbling up through the asphalt while driving on a road near my house, but it was in the very early stages of leaking so didn’t collapse. I called the water dept right away, and they spent the next 6 months replacing the entire water main under that road.

• [Lobster]

  A gaping hole in an A320?  Well, that’s what you get for driving passenger airliners down the road.

  • [Martin Buckler]

    Not AN A320, THE A320.

    The letter is the road clarification and the number is…well it’s a number. ‘A’ roads are main roads.

    • [ChicagoD]

      I think Lobster may have been joking.

      • [alephxero]

        I assume he meant the Airbus A320, but I had to read a couple of times to get it :)

      • [Lobster]

        No, I was seriously implying that someone was actually maneuvering an aircraft with a 34 meter wingspan down a public, two-lane road.

        But I’m totally joking when I say that.

• [tybalt]

  Road: OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

• [irksome]

  And I hear the carpet is getting pretty pissed at the vacuum cleaner…

• [Jason Sewall]

  Woking, eh? Must have been THE MARTIANS!

• [Miranda Roth]

  Wasn’t this an episode of Doctor Who?

• [Jesse Foltz]

  I know it’s not but is it just me or does that photo look poorly photoshoped.?

  • [SamSam]

    Indeed. I was thinking “this is true, so why did they bother photoshopping it?”

    As clichéd as it is, those pixels around the back tire look very suspect (from having seen quite a few shops in my time…). But I know it’s not shopped.

  • [Jethro Taylor]

    It does look like a bad ‘shop job- but if you click through to the article, you can see a half-dozen shots, from different angles- confirming the story. But yeah- my brain went WTF when I saw that picture, too.

    • [penguinchris]

      It was the same for the Guatemalan sinkholes for me – it didn’t help that the photos of those were not very good at showing what it actually looks like. It’s just hard for our brains to wrap around believing that we’re actually seeing something like this, especially in the age of photoshop.

      edit: I looked at all six photos in the article, and this is the only one that has that effect of being unbelievable – like the poorly done sinkhole photos

• [alfreeland]

  That’s a shovel ready project.

• [stillcantfightthedite]

  If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say the water main was PVC, and the bell joint failed because the contractor was lazy and thought using an excavator to join pipes was a good idea.

  • [Stephen Hemingway]

    It’s a definite possibility. I sold PVC water mains for years and have seen that exact problem many times. Basically, if the pipe is pushed too far into the bell of the adjoining pipe, it creates a situation where the pipe cannot “flex” (deflect) in the ground as intended. What makes it worse is that “over-homed” pipe will perform fine for a while (and pass inspection) only to fail at a later date as the ground settles. There are plenty of other possible explanations, though.

• [Jamal Mohmed]

  carholelelele.jpg

• [Duffong]

  This just isn’t being done enough: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y279/duff51/careater2.jpg?t=1318013781

• [Chris Ward]

  How could you miss the classic line, ‘A hole has appeared in the A320 – police are looking into it’?

• [Cicada Mania]

  Sometimes I wish boingboing.net had photoshop contests like fark.

  http://flic.kr/p/atLjeN

• [cmdrfire]

  Hey, I live near there! I think I’ll head over tomorrow and take some pictures.

• [Sam Nash]

  The original photo’s I have been emailed have a time stamp in the corner I think this is what’s been shopped out.

• [George Tirebiter]

  Hmmm, another victim of illiteracy????!!!!

  (Cartoon by Bernard Kliban)

  http://home.earthlink.net/~ric.heaton/photos/kliban/LastAnus.gif

• [Chris Burgess]

  http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5092/5530867207_e98bff275c_b.jpg

  Interesting? Look at liquefaction after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand

  http://www.3news.co.nz/Portals/0-Articles/199491/cars-street700.jpg

• [aarontheman]

  A perfect fit for a Honda Fit!