Flying debris on the highway is more of a problem than we typically hear about.
When I was a kid, my family was travelling through the Florida Panhandle. We passed a car that was stopped along the side of the road and my dad thought there was something odd about it. Down the road, we stopped at a gas station. The car we passed came into the gas station a few minutes later. The windshield as broken and covered with blood and feathers. Inside was a young mother with a couple of children. They were shaken up and speckled with blood. Apparently, she had hit a buzzard just before we passed them on the highway. Quite a mess.
Another time I was travelling with my parents in northern Michigan. Up ahead was a railroad overpass with a large truck coming through. Dad didn't think the truck would make it, so he slowed down. Sure enough, the truck was too big and 1 foot by 2 foot steel grating with a 1 inch angle iron frame was knocked off the top of the truck. It hit the road in front of us and bounced up into the bumper of my dad's 1967 Chrysler Newport. The angle iron frame punctured a hole in the bumper. If Dad hadn't slowed down, that grating might have right through the windshield.
Another time, I was driving on I-71 north of Columbus, Ohio. A utility trailer up ahead lost a wheel on the left side and the wheel bounded across the median at highway speed. It went into the oncoming lanes of traffic and a Toyota mini-van hit it square in the windshield. I don't know what happened to the mini-van and traffic was too heavy and moving too fast in my lane for anyone to stop.
