The Crittenden Automotive Library

Joys of 4-Wheeling

Joys of 4-Wheeling

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
January 30, 2008

Normally, drivers wanting to experience rocky, off-road, driving conditions head for the mountains of Colorado, Utah or Montana and seek out a ghost town on a summer afternoon. Or sometimes they’ll engage the four-wheel drive and head for deep snow.

At other times, they’ll just drive off the road and find themselves in the predicament of this driver. This vehicle left the road on westbound Algonquin Road (Route 62) in Barrington Hills, just west of Route 68, which is just west of Route 59.

Algonquin Road at this point is a dangerous stretch of about five miles of two-lane road. Although the speed limit is 55MPH and there are only a few crossroads, it is a roadway that has had numerous fatalities. This vehicle left the road shortly past a “lane-drop’, where two westbound lanes converge into one lane westbound.

It’s a stretch of roadway I’m familiar with, because I am often passed on the right by drivers hitting 60-65MPH in the 45-zone to beat me to the end of the two-lane section. Like they are going to save a lot of time, because they then have to hit the brakes and slow down. But I’ve also been passed on the left by drivers using the center, no-drive portion of the road for the same reason.

This driver? Who really knows how he ended up “on the rocks.” The rocks are adjacent to a gated entrance to a property on the north side of the road, and they are a short distance off the road; i.e., not right next to the roadway. Was this driver passing someone on the right and ran out of roadway and out of shoulder? Did a driver refuse to yield or to be cut off, forcing this driver to stay on the shoulder until he lost control? Or did the driver make a right-turn into the driveway too fast? Not likely, from the position of the vehicle.

Was it worth it? The tow truck along, which is not shown in the picture, probably cost $250 to pull him off the rocks and tow it away. Did the driver get a ticket for careless or reckless driving? Or failure to keep his vehicle under control?

A call to the Barrington Hills P.D. resulted in no information other than the officer who took the report was gone for the day.