A Bump in the Road

Canada has very good signage.  Often there is no text on the sign; there is only an icon.  One sign we have come to watch for very closely is the "bump" sign, which looks a bit like an inverted saw blade.  The "bump ahead" sign is very similar, but has an arrow pointing down the road to the "bump sign".

Bump ahead sign

Bump sign

Bump ahead sign, orange variety used in a construction zone

This bump sign got bumped over. Perhaps it got pounded by flying debris from a motor home.

The Canadian bump signs are all well and good, much better than we do in the US, but there is still a problem:  All bumps are not created equal.  Some bumps are like "Was that it? Did you feel any thing?"  While other bumps are "Holy mother of crap!!!  How long were we airborne?"  And you really can't tell by looking until it's too late.  A bump in a motor home is nothing like a bump in an automobile.  On a big bump, teeth rattle, dishes clatter and the dog runs and hides under the bed with a whimper.  We don't want to take bumps so hard that parts fall off the coach, but we also don't want to brake so hard and go so slow that drivers behind us skid off into the ditch to avoid a rear end chain reaction.

What they really need is a five-point Bump Classification Scale, much like the Richter Scale, so you will know how to react.  A "1" on the BCS would be a mild but noticeable bump that can be negotiated at near the speed limit.  A "5" on the BCS would make the windows fall out at 15 mph (or whatever the kph conversion is).  On Monday we hit bumps on two separate occasions that triggered the collision event function on our Garmin Dash Cam.  One of these events was in the US and no bump sign even existed.

Here is a short video of a bump event that triggered a Dash Cam collision event.  It may not look like much in the video due to the extreme wide angle view of the lens, but it was bone jarring.   Also, this bump was almost invisible from the cockpit.  Click here to see video.