It's like the 11' 8 Bridge, only wetter

May 18, 2021 5:46 PM

Rufford Lane, about 20 miles north of Nottingham in England has a trap for the incautious driver: a very deep ford. It can be filled with fail. Sometimes vehicles get so close to getting through … but no.
posted by scruss (85 comments total)

Is there always water in it, just not always so deep?
posted by clew at 5:54 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Sort of inverse Storrowing. oopsie
posted by sammyo at 5:55 PM on May 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

I wouldn't say the Ford was that deep, really. If anything it seemed to be floating, unlike the Kia, the Hyundai, and many Land Rovers.
posted by ardgedee at 6:04 PM on May 18, 2021 [12 favorites]

Why do they try? You can see there's water, and that it's probably deep. This is not, like, an inch of clear water flowing over the roadway, this is clearly a significant quantity of water!
posted by aramaic at 6:14 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

I am no expert but they way these people are trying to do it seems like the reverse of the way I would. If the water is below your intake and say your distributor/coil/electric etc. then you drive slowly across otherwise you don't. The fails seem self inflicted by driving so fast that they make a hefty bow wave which must be doing a number on their engines.
posted by Pembquist at 6:14 PM on May 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

What about the person who took it in reverse!?
posted by amanda at 6:19 PM on May 18, 2021

Why do they try? You can see there's water, and that it's probably deep. This is not, like, an inch of clear water flowing over the roadway, this is clearly a significant quantity of water!

I went asking the same question and found this.
posted by mce at 6:19 PM on May 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

Wait, this is an intentional flooding of the road to slow people down? If so, that's completely absurd. Do they not have rumble strips in Britain?
posted by zardoz at 6:22 PM on May 18, 2021

There seems to be nearly always water in it, clew. There are a surprising number of English villages with fords in them. I seem to remember the River Burn used to cross the main street of one of the Burnhams (either Burnham Thorpe, or Burnham Market) in Norfolk, and it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world.
posted by scruss at 6:26 PM on May 18, 2021

Huh. From mce's link apparently fords (like, intentional, year-round ones, not just easily flooded areas) are a not uncommon thing in British roads? That is... a choice.
posted by eviemath at 6:31 PM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

The PNW is full of underspecified, ill-built culverts that damage waterway connectivity year round and also regularly flood or wash out. I am interested in this alternate approach. (Is it hard surfaced under the water?)

"For much of the year, the ford is just a couple of inches deep so it presents no problem whatsoever," says Andrew Cox, general manager of Rufford Mill, a wedding venue near Rufford's ford.
"But there's a lot of run-off from the surrounding countryside so the ford can go as deep as five feet

posted by clew at 6:37 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's nuts and definitely dangerous: driving into floodwater is a way lots and lots of people die. It takes about 15cm of water to float a hatchback, because a modern car is a very efficiently water- and air-sealed light steel box; once your car has stopped moving the way you want it to—because the intake is full of water, because the tyres are floating, or because you've hit a fresh pothole or eroded edge, you're quite literally without a paddle.

The other people who laugh at these are car insurers, because they will absolutely not pay out for writing off a car like this...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:45 PM on May 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

If it’s flooded, forget it – James Freeman, The Psychology
If it's flooded, forget it. Tom's story.
Floodwater Safety Queensland

I live in the tropics and we have flash floods all the time. The If It's Flooded Forget It campaign is something you'll see on TV all summer long. And then on the news we see people stranded on the roof of their cars getting rescued. If they're lucky.

Everybody knows about this! There's something about the moment, you've come this far, and it's just water, you're in a mighty car! Car > water! So they plunge in. And it's so dangerous. We have fucking crocodiles!
posted by adept256 at 6:48 PM on May 18, 2021 [13 favorites]

15cm is not so much.

I am muttering "Turn Around Don’t Drown", a civic education campaign that seems to have worked on me. (As fun as "Logs in Surf can Kill".)
posted by clew at 6:51 PM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

It would probably cost more than £65,000 to raise up the road and install a culvert, but not like, that much more. Makes me feel ever so slightly better about the USA's crumbling infrastructure.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:53 PM on May 18, 2021

A cubic meter of water weighs a tonne though, and ten times that may flow past each second. Your hatchback doesn't have a chance.
posted by adept256 at 6:54 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh, that's a snorkel on those cars? I thought they were fixed for rolling coal. Somehow the snorkel makes me feel better.
posted by mollweide at 6:56 PM on May 18, 2021

They should make a model of car called the Ford RufFord, with monster-truck wheels, especially for this sort of thing.

Or, I don't know, some kind of structure that goes over the water. Bridges it, as one might say. But that would be daft. The tosser's way out.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:02 PM on May 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

Snorkel intakes were common on the SUVs meant for roving around the back country in Iceland when I visited. I want to believe that the Icelanders are a little less blase about thumbing their nose at the elements and approach these things more carefully even with that level of gear. But I'm really not so sure. Human nature.
posted by notoriety public at 7:03 PM on May 18, 2021

Ah. The promise of Brexit, but for internal combustion engines.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:04 PM on May 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

I used to work on the upper floor of a building that overlooked a street, and this street would flood pretty regularly during storms. At least a foot, sometimes 2 or 3 if it was heavy.

The city would rush out and put down blinky horses with large signs not to drive through the water. People would regularly ignore the signs, including the one guy that swerved around the city worker as he was putting the blinky sign down with his very blinky truck, and hydrolock their engines.

When it began to thunderstorm we would roll up chairs and wait. And it would happen. Every. Time.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:05 PM on May 18, 2021 [13 favorites]

Ford's aren't entirely uncommon in the US, but seem to have quickly fallen out of favor. I've driven across a few in rural Virginia and West Virginia.

DC had a ford across Rock Creek that was open to vehicles until 1996.
posted by schmod at 7:06 PM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

Some of those 4x4s that are prepared for such a crossing make a pretty entertaining sound: vrooommmm-blub-bloo-blurble-wubble-blrooommmmm..
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:11 PM on May 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

Our town had a road that ended in Lake Ontario if you didn't brake quickly enough. It was very popular with people among whom it wouldn't be popular had they been sober. I always wondered if there was a similar road on the other side, and if you were just drunk enough you could get from one to the other.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:12 PM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

like the 11' 8 Bridge, only wetter
I will lay me down 🎵
posted by oulipian at 7:13 PM on May 18, 2021 [21 favorites]

What is it that makes the engines stop? I worked on a bunch of old tractors back in the day, so I know enough to guess that it's probably either water in the air intake or an electrical short, but I don't know enough about modern cars to guess which one of those (or something else?) would be the specific culprit that'd kill a van 20 meters down the road from the ford.
posted by clawsoon at 7:39 PM on May 18, 2021

A study conducted in the journal Safety Science in 2016 found people who are "easily influenced by social expectations" were more likely to give it a go, Dr Van Gordon says - for example, somebody with a friend in the car who wants to get home.

I can imagine how the study was conducted. Sit around all day by a flooded ford; when a car inevitably gets stuck, casually stroll on over and start asking questions...
posted by clawsoon at 7:44 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Dr Van Gordon? Really? I guess they're in the right line of work anyway.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 8:17 PM on May 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

It would probably cost more than £65,000 to raise up the road and install a culvert, but not like, that much more. Makes me feel ever so slightly better about the USA's crumbling infrastructure.

It's hard to see the width clearly in the videos, but if this was in the US, replacing that ford with a bridge or box culvert might be in the $600k range, if I had to guess. (But with huge error bars on that guess -- a simple prefabricated bridge is going to be cheaper, or it could be a fair bit more if you had to set the approaches further back, or if the subsurface conditions aren't great.)

Around here, fords get used all the time on seldom-traveled roads but it is vanishingly rare to have them in service on roads that get enough use to be paved. It's interesting that the UK keeps them in use in more trafficked situations. One of the articles points out that it is only 4 miles to go around and they post closed signs when it is flooded, so ruining your car seems to be pretty clearly the driver's fault.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:43 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Brits never learned to caulk the wagon and float it?
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:47 PM on May 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

I love that there's a similar spot named Watery Gate Lane, in Leicestershire, and that googling for it brings up these news items:

Gates to be installed on road through infamous Watery Gate Lane ford near Hinckley
But a council has refused to pay 'excessive' costs for upgrading the infamous crossing

And two days later:

Drivers vandalise new flood gates at infamous Watery Gate Lane near Hinckley
'These gates were installed to ensure motorists safety'
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:14 PM on May 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

Greetings from Tucson, Arizona. We're not really known for our rivers and streams around here. Most of the year it's bone dry. But when the monsoons or the winter rains come, you quickly find out that some of our streets are crossed by washes, and those washes turn into rivers pretty quickly.

In fact, so many cars get stuck in washes and under underpasses that a few years back we passed a law that says that if you drive into a flood, you pay for your own rescue.

It's called the Stupid Motorist Law.
posted by MrVisible at 10:08 PM on May 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

If the water is below your intake and say your distributor/coil/electric etc. then you drive slowly across otherwise you don't. The fails seem self inflicted by driving so fast that they make a hefty bow wave which must be doing a number on their engines.

When fording water, you want a bow wave, but not a big one.
You want it big enough that it lowers the water behind it and you kind of truck along in the wake.
Basically a fast walk is the ideal speed for non-snorkeled vehicles.
Just don't stop or get impatient and gun it at the end.

In a modern 4x4 equipped SUV or truck, the air intake is generally high enough to ford tire high water, but a lot of vehicles have vulnerable electronics that will die quickly if they get wet.
Water splashes a long way in an engine compartment.
"Mall Crawler" vehicles based on sedan platform are especially vulnerable to this.

For running water, a safe rule is "If you can't wade across it, you can't drive across it".
posted by madajb at 11:15 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fords are typically just fine. I grew up a couple of miles from one and it was usually maybe three inches deep - we used to compete at cycling across it. It was probably there for hundreds of years before it became a road that cars would use.

The thing is that rivers are not a consistent depth, and so fords are not either. And fords are not so common that most people experience them on a regular basis. So look: there's a depth gauge! Isn't that quaint? ...But the numbers mean nothing to most people.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:30 PM on May 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

So look: there's a depth gauge! Isn't that quaint? ...But the numbers mean nothing to most people.

Perhaps the depth gauge needs a infographic showing how much of your car will be covered in water.

Not that it would help much, given that most of it would be underwater when you'd most need to see it...
posted by clawsoon at 11:51 PM on May 18, 2021

When it began to thunderstorm we would roll up chairs and wait.

Some of those videos show eager spectators by the side of the road too. Presumably they're locals who've come put to enjoy the entertainment?
posted by Paul Slade at 12:28 AM on May 19, 2021

Not far from Sherwood Forest. They should rebrand it the Little John Crossing or something.
posted by johngoren at 12:54 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

considering how consistent the camerawork is across all these vids, clearly there's someone whose hobby it is to hang out by the ford and film cars every time the road is flooded.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:11 AM on May 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

Fords on small roads are not that uncommon on the UK on roads that are less busy and where, as noted upthread, the alternative route isn't much longer, especially where the ford is mostly (very nearly) dry. We have less of a "car is king" culture here I guess; local authorities will consider the cost of a bridge or whatever to be much lower priority than a lot of other things (and note that there *is* a pedestrian bridge). Most drivers should have some idea of how to ford a small stream. Some, OTOH, evidently don't. And vehicles with snorkels, and even high suspension, are relatively common, especially in farm country, which is basically everywhere because distances are very small by US standards.

So as a UK observer, none of this seems very odd except that the water is so deep and so many people are messing it up, but that's largely a cherry-picking effect in the videos I suspect.
posted by merlynkline at 1:20 AM on May 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

I see a Mercedes emblem on a lot of those cars.
posted by torii hugger at 1:37 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

It's nuts and definitely dangerous: driving into floodwater is a way lots and lots of people die.

Unmarked floodwaters are definitely dangerous, but I find it hard to believe that the Rufford Lane ford has a signicant fatality rate. I see an article describing 100 drivers rescued in the past 5 years, but no mention of deaths.
posted by fairmettle at 1:45 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yes: there is a pretty ford on the headwaters of the River Cam, south of Cambridge. I discovered, painfully, that it was unsafe to cycle across with even three inches of water. It was perfectly normal to drive through it most of the time, but when the river rose you'd see Ford Kas and similar bobbing around in the pool immediately downstream.
posted by alloneword at 1:46 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

"Once your car is floating, there's nothing you can do to control it."

This concept seems elementary, yet I imagine once it actually happens to someone, there is more of the revelatory about it. Perhaps we are so used to being able to operate a vehicle almost as an extension of ourselves, it's just impossible to grasp a world in which some other force is capable of taking over the car while we are driving it?

I feel this to a degree when I go to a drive-through car wash and settle onto the tracks that convey my car through the structure. I always feel a frisson of anxiety that I now more fully realize speaks to that sense of loss of control. I'm stuck on that belt, I must go through the car wash, I CANNOT GET OFF EVEN IF I WANTED TO. Something about this will always unnerve me. So I feel fairly confident I'd never try to ford a deep-water crossing, unless the alternative was the possibility of an even more certain catastrophe or danger.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 2:58 AM on May 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

Fords are not exactly common in the UK, but they're not rare. We like them. They're fun. My father used to make a point of detouring any journey to drive through any nearby one, "to give the bottom of the car a wash".
posted by Hogshead at 3:25 AM on May 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

We have a lot of Ford's (and fords, damn autocorrect) in rural NZ, sometimes they're concreted (and called splashes) if the catchment is really flashy (flash flood prone).

One reason to not build a bridge is floods are so severe the bridge is destroyed, or at least the guardrail stripped off. Most everyone here is savvy enough to not drive through a flooded ford, but shiny, overpowered 4wds seem prone to this.
posted by unearthed at 3:29 AM on May 19, 2021

This makes me wonder what the failure mode of an all-electric car is in a similar situation. If it's insulated well enough that it doesn't shut down all you need to do is fit a small propeller in the back and you're good to go.
posted by each day we work at 3:39 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Someone needs to hook up a tow rope to a snorkeled Rover and pull a waterskier behind them. For the lulz.
posted by chavenet at 4:03 AM on May 19, 2021

Is there a sign in front of this place telling people not to try to cross unless they have high clearance, and even then to go slowly?

Not that it would completely solve the problem. Here in Arizona, we have dry washes that become flooded in the monsoon season. Despite pervasive reminders on the news about “Turn Around, Don’t Drown”, there are always a few people each year that decide to give it a try in their cars, and get stranded. Depending on the recent rainfall, they can be quite dangerous, and people do die.
posted by darkstar at 4:07 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is there a sign in front of this place telling people not to try to cross unless they have high clearance, and even then to go slowly?

I saw lots of crossings when I lived in England and they typically had both warning signs and measuring sticks to tell you the water level. Information is not a cure for stupid though.
posted by srboisvert at 4:31 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

"Once your car is floating, there's nothing you can do to control it."

This concept seems elementary, yet I imagine once it actually happens to someone, there is more of the revelatory about it. Perhaps we are so used to being able to operate a vehicle almost as an extension of ourselves, it's just impossible to grasp a world in which some other force is capable of taking over the car while we are driving it?

Anyone who has driven the QEW west from Toronto during a sudden heavy thunderstorm knows this feeling. Finding yourself suddenly hydroplaning in traffic at 120 kmh in a shitty little Renault as a slow bend in the highway approaches is not a great feeling. You don't know if and when you'll regain control and you aren't sure if any of the cars around you have control. And that is just maybe an inch of water on the road.
posted by srboisvert at 4:35 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

> Is there a sign in front of this place telling people not to try to cross unless they have high clearance, and even then to go slowly?

Why give a driver an opening to argue that they thought their car could clear it? it's better to mark the road as closed and let people make their bad decisions in good faith.
posted by ardgedee at 5:12 AM on May 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

My father used to make a point of detouring any journey to drive through any nearby one, "to give the bottom of the car a wash".

My dad used to do the same thing on the fenland roads of Norfolk, to our immense joy at the (dangerous!!) bow wave splashes. Then he would end up having to go to an actual car wash because the water in the ford was full of the dirt and grit of all the other cars and left a disgusting brown film over the paint, not to mention the crap that probably ended up on the underside.

Fun, though. What I would give to be ten years old and secure in the back of my parents' car being excited by a puddle again. Stupid adulthood.
posted by fight or flight at 5:30 AM on May 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

There are a number of water hazards under railroad bridges in Rochester, NY that appear following heavy rains. The bridges were built by the NY Central RR over a hundred years ago when motorized vehicles weren't much of a thing and the road has been lowered to allow modern traffic to pass underneath. There are signs, but we all know that doesn't mean much.
posted by tommasz at 6:37 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's also possible that some of these fords have became more dangerous with increasing development as increasing impervious surface cover in the watershed has led to more runoff and faster, higher storm peak flows. People who have lived there forever may remember when they could always cross just fine and be surprised to find that's no longer true.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:59 AM on May 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

It would seem to simple just to build a bridge over it. Issue a bond and solve the problem. I don't understand what's happening here.
posted by MythMaker at 7:17 AM on May 19, 2021

Is it wrong that I find the sounds of humming motors and sloshing water incredibly soothing? I want a 10 hour youtube remix to study / relax to.
posted by moonmilk at 7:51 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

They don't realise 30cm of flowing water is enough to float your car

Well no wonder; who the fuck knows what 30cm is? Gotta use the measures that Baby Jesus used. A foot of water, why didn't you just say so?

The key thing about the Rufford Lane ford is that the water isn't flowing, or at least not much. A foot of still water isn't going to float your car. A foot of moving water will sweep you downstream right fast. That's why flash flooding in places like Arizona or New Mexico are so dangerous; when there's water, it's moving and has a lot of force.

What I don't understand about these perpetually-wet fords; isn't the road repair ridiculously expensive?
posted by Nelson at 8:01 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

I wonder if there's a nearby lucrative business to extract and perhaps repair the many fails! "Waders, Winch, & Wrench, Ltd"

Ah, Google Street View suggests there is not.
posted by gregoreo at 8:03 AM on May 19, 2021

"Oh, yeah- now you've flooded it."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:30 AM on May 19, 2021

Every spring the underpasses of Toronto flood and every year someone (often many someones) get their cars stuck in it. The water isn't going anywhere so it's not as dangerous but it always amazes me how many people decide to drive into it.
posted by cirhosis at 8:31 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

You can't drive your van through the Rufford Lane
No, you can't drive your van through the Rufford Lane
No, you can't drive your van through the Rufford Lane
But you can be happy if you've a mind to
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:42 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

It would seem to simple just to build a bridge over it. Issue a bond and solve the problem. I don't understand what's happening here.

It's one of those unusual situations, which do happen on small rural roads, that drivers are expected to cope with. Others include:

1. humpback bridges e.g. over the canal at Turnerwood
2. roads too narrow for vehicles to pass e.g. at Monyash
3. gates across a road going into open country e.g. in Kingsdale

posted by vincebowdren at 8:47 AM on May 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

and when you've gone through the gate into open country, livestock on the road.
posted by vincebowdren at 8:53 AM on May 19, 2021

When I lived in Norfolk, we had this doozy, beneath a rail overpass. It was well known, there were easy, direct alternatives a few blocks east and west, and yet this happened all the time.
posted by martin q blank at 8:57 AM on May 19, 2021

I mean, it's right there in the name. Ruf ford. If it was easy, it'd be named diff'rent.
posted by amanda at 9:11 AM on May 19, 2021 [7 favorites]

And, dammit, vincebowdren, quit showing me all the adorably quaint places I'm not currently living in.
posted by amanda at 9:14 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fords are common enough in the UK that there's a question about crossing them on the driving test. My Dad loved driving across a ford and would go out of his way if there was one around. Learning how to cross one safely (step 1: only try if you really are sure it's shallow enough) was part of growing up.

That said, none of the ones I knew were anything like that deep. You can see in some of the clips that it's in flood and unusually deep, but even the regular depth looks a bit much.
posted by YoungStencil at 9:41 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thanks vincebowdren, I'm currently obsessing over boating the canal system and every little bit helps.
posted by evilDoug at 10:26 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

evilDoug: I hope you've seen Cruising the cut He doesn't put out many videos lately but there is a canal full of old videos.
posted by cirhosis at 10:43 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Not too far from me is the Brookfield Floating Bridge. I haven't been on the most recent (8th) version- it looks like it's all above water.
The times I went across, it had 2-4" of water, and that was scary enough. (Although I think there was no danger)
posted by MtDewd at 10:52 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I kind of love how the onlookers cheer when a normal passenger car actually makes it.

Also, if you're like me and you were shouting about, "Who puts a £1,000 tubular-steel bumper on an off-roader but not a snorkel?!" the snorkel was on the opposite side as in the States. Didn't notice it until that same ride took a second trip through the water.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:08 AM on May 19, 2021

cirhosis, Oh yes, there are actually loads of folk on the canals doing you tube videos including Holly - The Cafe Boat which is my favorite, currently, and Chugging Along, which is a couple of English teachers on a narrowboat.
posted by evilDoug at 11:13 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

This also happens every rainy season when you build a freeway interchange on top of what used to be Islais Creek.
posted by rdc at 11:34 AM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

→ who the fuck knows what 30cm is? Gotta use the measures that Baby Jesus used

A little more than one zeret, then — or three tefachim, give or take an etzba.

I'm kind of shocked by the response to this thread. It's HackerNews-level clueless in places, and I expected more from Mefites. The road isn't broken at all: it's working as designed. It doesn't need fixing or upgrading: you'd have to demolish lots of nearby established buildings to put up a bridge. Britain didn't have an "empty" canvas to build its infrastructure on, since things have been slowly upgraded over the centuries. Moving to Canada, I was shocked at the number of level crossings (and living near enough to one that we hear the commuter train honking at it at 5 am). I mean, can't someone build a bridge?

Flooding is not to be fucked with. I've seen washes in Arizona, and they look like a wild bulldozer trundled through. I remember doing some surveying near Tonopah, AZ where the entire road had been scoured out to more than the height of the roof of my car. You'd have been so very dead in a flash flood.
posted by scruss at 11:37 AM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

evilDoug... Thanks but Nope I'm not falling down that YouTube hole again... *click* Damnit!
posted by cirhosis at 12:34 PM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Where I grew up there weren't many actual fords (though a lot of Fords), but there were lots of low water bridges. Dry most of the time, but sufficient rain results in a water covered structure that may or may not be safe to cross.

Whether it is safe to cross in a sedan or other small car depends on a lot of variables in addition to simple depth. Flow rate and width being the most important, but surface type also matters. You might get stuck in the ford in the wrong car if the bottom is muddy, for example. Sometimes a bow wave can work for you, other times it might be your undoing.

There's not anything inherently wrong with them, but like many conditions one might encounter on a road, unfamiliarity with them can be dangerous at times.
posted by wierdo at 3:00 PM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I live in Queensland. If there is water on the road I assume it is fifteen feet deep and rushing at full speed and I will explode if I touch it, so I either find a different route or like, probably we don't really actually need to go to [place] right now today, let's just go home.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:14 PM on May 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

What I enjoy most about this is that, in spite of all the talk of restricted space and construction difficulties, they've managed to build a very sturdy-looking pedestrian bridge right next to the road/deathtrap.
posted by The Tensor at 4:43 PM on May 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

It's amazing how much this kind of thing totally freaks Americans out. It's not just the greater priority given to pedestrians over cars though - it's a deeper revulsion I think is rooted in the horror they feel at the thought of the harsh rectilinearity of their cities being pollluted by the promiscuous fluidity of uncontrolled water.
Also the absence of strip malls.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:24 PM on May 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

...it's a deeper revulsion I think is rooted in the horror they feel at the thought of the harsh rectilinearity of their cities being pollluted by the promiscuous fluidity of uncontrolled water.

I mean people were building bridges millennia before America was founded, but you're probably right about the polluted rectilinearity or whatever, so go ahead and keep on sailing hatchbacks across that little creek.
posted by The Tensor at 6:15 PM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Sailing hatchbacks is all fun and games as long as you make it to the other side, but I grew up in one of the few places in the lower 48 that still had unpaved state highways. Still has one, actually, though they paved half of it in the early 00s. I know people who have broken axles on it, but I don't quite understand how. It's not that bad, but it does have a ford.

They quit calling the rest state highways, sadly. They're still delightful drives through the darkest of woods, though. Not great places to get stuck, but you'd be surprised what a sedan you can almost fit your head under can make it through. The consequences of an error are probably higher now that they use plastic underbody covers rather than steel skid plates, however. I really miss my 1991 Accord.
posted by wierdo at 7:30 PM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

The water is almost over the walkway on the pedestrian bridge, which suggests to me that this is an unusually high water level and that it is normally much lower. Most fords I've seen have no more that 4-6 inches of water, maybe less or even none in the summer, and maybe a foot or so in winter. This looks like a combination of a winter spate of water combined with an unusually deep ford - the bed of the ford could be built up to avoid these depths, but that would only spread the water out further to the sides, perhaps flooding the (very close) buildings on the banks, and the expense would not be worth it anyway for a couple of weeks a year. What seems to be happening here is that they have put up signs warning of the deep water (you can see the back of one in some shots) and then everyone just stands around watching the ones who try it anyway and making bets about who will get through. Simple village pleasures.

Basically, no-one here is in any serious danger - the worst that can happen is being stranded in the middle, having to be towed out and dying of embarrassment. The footbridge would catch anything actually washed away, I suppose a driver could stall in the middle, get out of the car, trip, bash their head and become trapped under the bridge, but that would put us more in Midsomer Murders territory, if that hasn't already been used as a plot.
posted by Fuchsoid at 9:28 PM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

the horror they feel at the thought of the harsh rectilinearity of their cities being pollluted by the promiscuous fluidity of uncontrolled water

More like horror at the thought of the harsh pollution from the usual roadway runoff plus any additional yuckiness swept off of cars by those bow waves and such going directly into the waterway, unfiltered by any road-side or stream-side plants.
posted by eviemath at 5:00 AM on May 20, 2021

My father used to make a point of detouring any journey to drive through any nearby one, "to give the bottom of the car a wash".

I present from 1924: Chicago's Auto-Wash-Bowl.
posted by srboisvert at 5:22 AM on May 20, 2021

A couple of things to know about the way fords like this work in England.

* For most of the year the ford is very shallow, a few centimetres deep. Only a few days a year, after heavy rain, does the water level rise enough to be hazardous to vehicles. See Google Street View for more typical conditions at Rufford.
* Most fords have a gauge to show how deep the water is (but I don't see one at Rufford—perhaps this is one of the things that makes it risky).
* The road network in England is very dense, so that if the ford is impassable then it is rarely a long detour. In the case of Rufford it's about two miles to go around via the nearest bridge. It's not worth risking your car to save five minutes.
* For the highway authority, the alternative to a ford would not be building a bridge (too expensive, especially given that there are alternative routes), but closing the road.

there is a pretty ford on the headwaters of the River Cam, south of Cambridge. I discovered, painfully, that it was unsafe to cycle across with even three inches of water

I guess that's the ford at Hinxton? It is very slippery with algae and weed—I have also fallen in there!
posted by cyanistes at 6:21 AM on May 21, 2021