That's not quite true, Dave. My wife is from Spain and became a naturalized U. S. citizen while retaining her Spanish citizenship. She came to the U.S. as a child and speaks better English than most of my friends. She is a high school graduate and was a successful cosmetologist for many years. I'd say she was taught by very good teachers and learned a lot. Unfortunately for her, she never took a driver's education course and some things she does wrong in driving is because she was never taught how to do them correctly. Still, she has been driving since 1965 and has only one accident that required police and that was in 1966. She will learn from this straight on driving onto and over the driveway curb and use that knowledge to make a better decision in the future...OR, I'll rip up her passports and she won't be going back to see her family in Spain anytime soon!
That's funny, Chuck, but almost true. About 4 years ago, the Miami County road crews came into our neighborhood and leveled out nearly all of the driveway curbs before running out of money. Damn the luck..they ran out of money after doing my neighbor's drive...saying they'd be back the following year. they have not returned, but I'm sure as Hell not going to foot the bill myself. Slant angles for entering and leaving the drive have worked for me and my R53, as well as the R50. Hopefully, my wife will catch on, too.
Maybe Ohio needs to raise taxes for the roads to be fixed. I was in Ohio for Teddy service and the roads completely SUCK.
I ALWAYS enter the driveway slowly, and back our again, slowly, too. I've had her gal friends mention that they thought my wife was imitating a demolition derby with regard to our driveway. One lady even told her husband to ask me if a lift kit was available for Francie's S. It's no wonder the part broke, but I still maintain it could have been prevented if my wife would only slow down and enter/leave on an angle.
County and local roads are even worse, Dave. Our taxes for highway maintenance were just raised this year, but it will take awhile for any monies to be collected and spent.
At my old house my garage was off the alley in back. It was such a tight turn that in order to get the race car (with welded diff) in the garage I had to go pretty damn fast & grab the hand brake. Perfect turn every time. Here at the old folks home it's easier to get into the drive & garage. The garage is smaller though, only two cars. The old one could easily do three. Such is life we get old & downsize. Jeff check this out...... https://curbramp.us/
Sounds like a great and relatively cheap solution to our entrance/exit problem! Unfortunately, installation will have to wait for warmer weather, so sometime next Spring or early Summer when the weather is warmer. However, I wrote down the addy and will see if "wifey" will go for it. Thanks, Chuck!
Your telling the truth. My wife has an 2005 SLK with the amg pkg and has had the front areo kit replaced 2 times now at the cost of about 3k each time.
All the above ideas don't work, tell her that the repair costs come out of her paycheck not yours and don't negotiate. It does work.
I called the city because my curb in front of my driveway had deteriorated so badly I couldn't even get in my driveway. The city came on previously and has sprayed a mix of tar and pea gravel into the holes, but the first good rain we had washed it out. I called and complained and told them not to bother sending out the guy with the pea gravel again, later that day a crew pulled up, milled out the old concrete and ashphalt and laid in a whole new curb! An hour later it was done and has held up well for a few years now. If you don't make the curb the same as the rest of the road (if you concrete a ramp in over the curb like in the video shown in the other post) then water won't flow down the curb but rather go around the ramp, and it won't last. My neighbor did this with concrete and it only lasted a year or so before chunks of it came out - best thing to do is for her to learn how to approach the drive at an angle and slowly, as he said.
I live out in the boonies, at the end of a mile long dead end, we don't have sidewalks and curbs. It is my responsibility to grade the end of my 200' gravel driveway to match the edge of the road.