I came up with this post while I was thinking more destructively than normal. I thought, ‘what kind of car/truck design might destroy the very asphalt the driver was riding upon?’. My first instinct was to have wheels (titanium of course) that went to a point where they touched the road. And then, maybe if the vehicle was a pickup truck you could add mass to the back of the vehicle that would help it chew up the road.
But, if the titanium wheels are like razor blades, they will cut through the lower strata of the road as well, not just the asphalt. In fact the wheels will keep spinning until the vehicle is up to its axles on the road.
But I just wanted the vehicle to chew up the asphalt and keep moving. This is where years of mechanics training allows me to suggest simple flanges two inches from the edge of the wheels would stop the wheel from sinking in at that two inch mark.
After coming up with this breakthrough, I tried to make my design more societally friendly. My driver would become the Masked Asphalt Chewer and would only rip up certain roads. You know the roads that he would target; the ones that the city or county or province or nation is waiting so long to repave that it wrecks the suspension of every other car to drive upon it. The Masked Asphalt Chewer would drive on those sections of road, forcing the government’s hand and making them repave it sooner rather than later.
Of course this means the Masked Asphalt Chewer would cause your taxes to go up, either by getting away with his crimes or forcing the government to lock him up.
But the neatest thing about the Masked Asphalt Chewer is that he could use only one of his cutting, flanged wheels and with the other wheels being tires, thus be able to sign his name in cursive. Or write whatever he wants. He could point out corruption in the mayor’s office for instance. He could become the world’s first asphalt graffiti artist.
