Do you have ditches on the side of the road where you live?

Yes I have ditches on the side of the dirt road that my house on the mountain is on. There are culverts to drain the water flow about every half mile as the road goes down from the ridgetop.
If the ditch wasn’t there to allow the water to drain into the culvert, the road would become washed out at various places.

Yes we have ditches as well,and being a guy I don’t think parents worries about that as much because as a teenager I would be off exploring logging roads on my dirt bike miles and and miles from nowhere.

YUP !

It can rain 5 inch or more in a day.

Yes ditches everywhere. We have thin top soil in many areas creating flooding quickly, so they’re necessary.

No ditches. My parents would just say they were worried “something happened”.

Major roads here in the Atlanta suburbs have curbs and sewers.

Minor roads and many residential streets have ditches.

The road that I live on has a creek at the bottom of the hill, so the County put in storm sewers to guide rainwater to the creek. The street next to be has ditches.

I live in a semi rural area, similar to @elbanditoroso. Some streets have ditches, some have sidewalks and storm sewers.

Parents worry about kids lying dead in a ditch because if it was on a road or sidewalk, the body would be seen fairly quickly. But in a ditch no one can see your body unless they are standing almost on top of you.

Worrying about finding your kid (daughter) in a ditch is because if they were ever thrown out of a car, unconscious, a ditch was where they’d likely land.
The reality, tho, was that I be more likely to drink myself unconscious in a field and get trampled by cows.

Not ditches. There are gullies where storm water flows to get into the county drainage system. These gullies are grassy and kept up nicely. I think of a ditch as a rocky muddy wet channel. We called these ditches when I was a kid and we played in them all the time. We caught all sorts of critters, frogs, and tadpoles. I don’t remember ever seeing a snake though.

Those are ditches, too @snip. But we have the muddy ones as well.

Yes. Ditches everywhere.

Also logging roads, trailer parks, truckstops, dark alleys, abandoned churches, biker bars, sleazy motels, strip clubs, nude beaches, and the rare book room at the university library.

So many places where things could go wrong…

Oh. I almost forgot that Odd Fellows cemetery out on Cedar Road.

Good times.

^lol!

@JLoon I don’t know where you’re talking about, but I always got a kick out of the IOOF. I’m sure they are a fine and upstanding group; it’s the name that gets me.

I think my parents were more worried about me becoming a ‘ditch-digger’, whateverthehell that is. Have you ever seen anyone digging ditches? I haven’t. I think they happen naturally when a road is made.

Pre-Caterpillar / John Deere / and various other equipment manufacturers, ditch digging was manual function, often performed by prisoners on work details. You’ll occasionally still see that here, although primarilly prisoners are doing trash pickup on the sides of the highway.

As an example of the worry about ditches: a woman was last seen in a Houston suburb a year ago after fighting with her boyfriend who was a former professional football player.

Her body was “found in a ditch in the northern part of the county in early December.” They were just identified following forensic work.

I grew up in a suburb with no ditches in the subdivisions, but lots of ditches along roads in the fields and farms.

Lived most of my life in Chicago with sidewalks and narrow grass verges. (or no grass at all).

Today I look out my window to see a ditch on my side of the road and a sidewalk on the other. I’m at the edge of Milwaukee, where residential neighborhoods feather into light industrial, park, suburban, and farm land.

We have ditches everywhere. That’s where your car goes when you slide off the road in a snow or ice storm.

@elbanditoroso But why did they dig ditches in the first place? Is it for water runoff?

@smudges exactly it’s so the water could run off and not take a chance at flooding the road or causing washouts.

Yes, it’s for water runoff, but my husband and I were convinced that the county had an arrangement with the towing companies! It was so scary, trying to navigate down an icy road with deep ditches on either side! I remember one time where we slid all the way down a very steep and long gravel road sideways. It was the only way to town.

Thanks @SQUEEKY2!

Nope. None near where I live. In Florida in subdivisions we tend to have swales, and water is mostly directed to the roads.

Although, to @Dutchess_III’s point, you might know about Mark Zupan’s accident, he is the paraplegic main character on the documentary Murderball, and his family is good friends of ours. He became paralyzed from an accident where he was thrown from the back of a pick-up into a canal, which maybe could be considered a ditch full of water. Somehow an alligator didn’t come after him the hours he was there. This happened in Florida. He held himself up by a tree branch, being bitten by red ants all over his body and became hypothermic. Finally he was found. Or, maybe she meant thrown, like a dead soldier or something, where the person was thrown by someone else out of a vehicle.

When I lived in TN we had ditches along many roads including the one I lived on. Maybe they are handy if a tornado is coming at you.