In a bid to test the honesty of Adelaide’s most confident piece of roadside signage, Adelaide Mail’s investigative reporting team (consisting of this article’s author, his toy poodle and all the Pokemon he captured on Pokemon Go in 2016) did the thing that everyone has thought about doing when coming down the Freeway into Adelaide.
Driving at a healthy 68km/h in the right-hand lane, this article’s author wondered aloud what it would be like to go up one of those arrester beds in a hatchback. While that is a thought that is usually quickly dismissed, new signs erected along the Freeway downtrack have been installed daring motorists to give the ramps a shot.
The signs reading: “No cost for safety ramp recovery” are presumed to be challenging motorists try out the roadside gravel traps.
Though our car’s brakes were in perfectly good working order (we know this because we were riding them all the way down the Freeway to ensure all cars behind us were thoroughly stuck), this article’s author threw caution to the wind and decided to prop his feet up on the dashboard to properly test the allegedly free safety ramps.
Careening across three lanes of traffic and up the final recovery ramp delivered a rush unlike anything we’ve felt since accidentally catching an express train to Noarlunga on Saturday night after the footy.
With the Corolla buried axle-deep in the gravel, we awaited the free safety ramp recovery team to show up, presumably with a hot drink and one of those silver blankets that people get when they’re helicoptered out of bushland after several days. So you can imagine our shock when we were slugged with a hefty fine for “misuse of an emergency ramp”.
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