Driving into flatulence

[bandit957]

Is it possible to drive into a fart? I've had some serious discussions with family members about this.

Sometimes when you're in the car, you'll smell it, and the predictable cries of accusation always spring up. But I don't see how the source of it can be anyone in the car, for the car is moving. If they farted in the car, the stench would have been left behind, right? So my conclusion is that you're driving into a fart produced by someone in a car up ahead.

Make sense?

[NE2]

Only if the windows are open.

PS: Don't forget cows.

[Brandon]

Well, it is possible to drive into the smell of a sewage treatment plant that smells just as bad, even if the windows are closed.

[corco]

If it's just a single person farting  in a convertible ahead of you, I'd think your car moving along at 70 MPH or whatever would dissipate the smell before you'd register it.

[jeffandnicole]

While I *guess* it's possible, it would have to be a really strong one.  And the windows would have to be open.

I can sometimes smell people smoking in front of me, especially because they are flicking their cig out the window.

[Jardine]

There is a rendering plant I sometimes drive by, and I always try to remember to roll up winds, turn on AC and set to recirc before I get close to it.  I have no idea how the people who live near it stand it.

As for a fart in the car ahead, you'd would just about have to be in town on a windless day, and the guy in the car ahead would have to really like baked bean and sauerkraut pizza.

[NE2]

PPS: the car is an inertial (usually) frame of reference, so a fart in the car will remain in the car unless dissipated by an outside force (such as the windows being open).

PPPS: the smelter is the delter.

[1995hoo]

PPS: the car is an inertial (usually) frame of reference, so a fart in the car will remain in the car unless dissipated by an outside force (such as the windows being open).

....

I have, on occasion, used the sunroof's "tilt" feature to lift the rear of the sunroof, then turned on the windshield defroster to blow a fart out the roof.

[hbelkins]

Why am I not surprised at who started this thread? 

One of my childhood memories is traveling along KY 89 near the community of Trapp in Clark County. Because my dad did not like paying tolls on the Mountain Parkway, usually when we went to Winchester, we took KY 52, KY 1571 and KY 89 through Estill County. Near Trapp, there was some source of a rotten egg smell that permeated the air for a small area. I never knew what caused that smell and it has not existed for many, many years.

Other natural sources of foul odors that I remember are a pig farm along KY 92 north of Monticello in Wayne County (which was on the way to my grandfather's cabin near Lake Cumberland, where we used to go fishing on occasion) and the dairy farm on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.

And as previously mentioned, sewage plants can really stink sometimes. The ones in my hometown and the town where I work are both especially fragrant.

But to try to provide a serious answer to Tim's question, I don't think you could smell an instance of flatulence from a car you're following or just met. Despite their denials, it was probably someone in the vehicle.

[Brian556]

I actually think this would be possible under the right conditions.

I used to work with a 400-lb man who could let out massive amounts of very pungent gas multiple times in a row. He regularly drank a lot of alcoholic beverages, and ate tons of spicy foods. Once, after eating at a local Mexican Resteraunt, we were working in a very large garage, which had two truck bays plus a ton of other space. He let off about a fart so pungent that it stunk up 7/8 of this massive garage. He repeated this about six times in next 25 minutes.

So, if you were sitting at a red light near this guy, and he was on his motorcycle, and he farted, you would probably be able to smell it.

[Zeffy]

I actually think this would be possible under the right conditions.

I used to work with a 400-lb man who could let out massive amounts of very pungent gas multiple times in a row. He regularly drank a lot of alcoholic beverages, and ate tons of spicy foods. Once, after eating at a local Mexican Resteraunt, we were working in a very large garage, which had two truck bays plus a ton of other space. He let off about a fart so pungent that it stunk up 7/8 of this massive garage. He repeated this about six times in next 25 minutes.

So, if you were sitting at a red light near this guy, and he was on his motorcycle, and he farted, you would probably be able to smell it.

Did I really just read that?

I've smelt some nasty things when driving - and some of them are from my own rectal cavity. I've found that even if I roll down the windows, the smell lingers for as long as if I didn't open them in the first place.

[1995hoo]

I think the worst thing I've ever smelled while driving was that seemingly permanent stench that hangs in the air around the Goethals Bridge. The worst time was when my brother gave me a ride to New York so I could pick up furniture our relatives were giving me (I was renting a truck for the trip home). We had the windows open for most of the trip and it was pleasant, but for some unknown reason he refused to put up the windows as we approached the Carteret exit despite my urging him to do so, and by the time we wound up in stopped traffic on the Goethals Bridge it was too late. I thought I was going to have to lean out the window and puke. Car and Driver once referred to that area as "miles and miles of universal fart," but I must disagree because farts smell a lot more pleasant than that area.

Back in the mid-1980s I was riding with my father and brother near Laurel Hill State Park in Pennsylvania en route to Seven Springs for a Boy Scout ski weekend one Friday night when my father madly swerved to avoid something. I twisted around to see what had happened just in time to see another one of the fathers on the trip (who was following us) fail to notice the skunk my dad had just avoided. We were probably doing 45 to 50 mph and he was driving a pickup.....the skunk never stood a chance, of course, but you could actually see a cloud of some kind of vapor (I don't know what, but I still assume it was a combination of blood, guts, and the contents of the skunk's stink glands). We never smelled a thing....until we all pulled up and parked at the ski resort a little while later and those poor guys got out of the truck. Damn, I was glad I didn't have to ride in that vehicle. Their clothes smelled all weekend because they were all too cheap to use the resort's laundry service, and we later learned they could still smell the skunk on the drive home that Sunday. 

[jeffandnicole]

PPPS: the smelter is the delter.

If one was to deal the smell, and then pass by that point later on (next hour, next day, later in life...) and it can STILL be smelled, then please apply for an atomic bomb permit!

[DeaconG]

Paper mills are especially bad generators of that smell, there was one in Perry near US 19 that used to give me fits.

Driving past hog carriers on the road is also not recommended.

[agentsteel53]

Back in the mid-1980s I was riding with my father and brother near Laurel Hill State Park in Pennsylvania en route to Seven Springs for a Boy Scout ski weekend one Friday night when my father madly swerved to avoid something. I twisted around to see what had happened just in time to see another one of the fathers on the trip (who was following us) fail to notice the skunk my dad had just avoided. We were probably doing 45 to 50 mph and he was driving a pickup.....the skunk never stood a chance, of course, but you could actually see a cloud of some kind of vapor (I don't know what, but I still assume it was a combination of blood, guts, and the contents of the skunk's stink glands). We never smelled a thing....until we all pulled up and parked at the ski resort a little while later and those poor guys got out of the truck. Damn, I was glad I didn't have to ride in that vehicle. Their clothes smelled all weekend because they were all too cheap to use the resort's laundry service, and we later learned they could still smell the skunk on the drive home that Sunday. 

I actually don't mind the smell of skunk.  now bleach, that to me is an unpleasant one.

[Brandon]

Paper mills are especially bad generators of that smell, there was one in Perry near US 19 that used to give me fits.

Driving past hog carriers on the road is also not recommended.

Nor hog farms for that matter.

[formulanone]

Paper mills are especially bad generators of that smell...

I-95 near Brunswick, Georgia is a supernatural type of nasty.

[Sanctimoniously]

West Monroe, Louisiana has a particularly pungent paper mill. Even to someone who lives here, it can occasionally be pretty bad.

[corco]

Tacoma, Washington used to be well known for its Tacomaroma that came from a combination of a paper mill and the industrial smell of the sea. Its a lot better now, you can still get a sniff every now and then, but it used to be unbearable. I have similar memories of Chillicothe, Ohio near where the family farm was having a similarly offensive paper odor

[TCN7JM]

Littered throughout the eastern Dakotas/western Minnesota area are some sugar beet factories, which just smell...weird.

[xcellntbuy]

Smells of whatever stench, cannot be topped by some of the following:

"Mount Trashmore," one of my County's trash burning landfills, located in Coconut Creek, FL in northern Broward County immediately east of the Florida's Turnpike at Exit 69.

What is colloquially know as the "backwash" along of the Hudson River following NY 9J (River Road, originally the Farmer's Turnpike from 1802) between Columbiaville and Rensselaer, NY.

POWERFUL swamp gas approaching the US 17 bridge crossing the South Carolina-Georgia state line into Savannah, GA on a summer evening.

I grew up in a small suburban neighborhood outside of Hudson, NY in the Town of Greenport which surrounds the first chartered city in independent America (1785).  Greenport has no zoning ordinance and it has been voted down twice in my lifetime.  A now closed, chicken farm in the northwest direction of the home where I grew-up and now own, occasionally would catch just the right wind direction.  Dear God it was so, so, so bad.  No one would go outdoors.  Children stayed indoors to play.   

[Jardine]

Franksville Wisconsin area can be a little pungent after the cabbage harvest.  There is always some residue left in the fields, and if it's warm out it can make quite an aroma.

[Brandon]

Pekin, Illinois has a rather odd smell.  There's a plant in the southwest part of town that distills alcohol for use in products, including ethanol for gasoline.  https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.553265,-89.663029&spn=0.018814,0.042272&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=40.55322,-89.663052&panoid=OEGaMZ5YsDWXeTgPPtyQ5Q&cbp=12,354.7,,0,-0.73

[Molandfreak]

Faribault, MN always smells like crap, even when you're nowhere near the sewage treatment plant they blame it on. A common joke here is that the two biggest cities in Rice County traded off: Northfield got the brains, Faribault got the county seat.

[Molandfreak]

I used to work with a 400-lb man who could let out massive amounts of very pungent gas multiple times in a row. He regularly drank a lot of alcoholic beverages, and ate tons of spicy foods. Once, after eating at a local Mexican Resteraunt, we were working in a very large garage, which had two truck bays plus a ton of other space. He let off about a fart so pungent that it stunk up 7/8 of this massive garage. He repeated this about six times in next 25 minutes.

Fired for farting? Now that's harsh.