Speed humps are an effective way to slow down traffic, but some are a little bit too high to do the job without damaging vehicles.

Many Toronto streets are blessed — or cursed, depending on how you feel about them — with speed humps (as the city calls them), a traffic calming measure used in residential areas.

Most are marked with signs and have arrows painted on top of them to give drivers ample warning to slow down and prepare for a small bump, as their vehicle passes over it.

Engineering specifications for them are pretty much the same across North America, calling for them to be no higher than about three inches, or 7.5 centimetres, at the peak of the hump.

But if they’re much higher, they can cause an unexpected bounce that can damage vehicles and launch drivers out of their seats, like a bucking horse at a rodeo.

Jonas Kuhnemann sent us an email with “speed bump of death!” in the subject line, on Coady Ave., just south of Malton Ave. in Leslieville. It captured our immediate attention, as well as our admiration for outstanding hyperbole.

“There is one speed bump at 92 Coady that causes many cars to bottom out and potentially damage the vehicle,” he said. “This is also a distracting road hazard as it happens unexpectedly at what are normally low speeds.

“The uneven pavement just past this speed bump is deeply grooved from cars bottoming out,” he said, adding that four other humps on Coady don’t have any grooves in front of them from vehicles bottoming out.

After he hit the hump with his car, it “immediately had a slight creaking issue in the front end, and I also soon had an expensive exhaust repair.”

I went there and watched as most vehicles approached it slowly enough that it didn’t send them into orbit. But a couple vehicles that approached quickly rocked like a midway ride, with their front ends bottoming out in front of it.

We spoke to a guy who lives just a few doors away, who said he can hear the noise made by vehicles bottoming out from inside his house, adding that “it’s like a scratching sound. I hear it all the time.”

STATUS: Tom Kalogiannis, who’s in charge of road operations in that area, emailed to say he’s sending out someone to investigate the hump right away, and will make sure it’s fixed.

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