A rock in West Omaha is catching everybody’s attention for its ability to wreck cars. Somebody put it in place to stop drivers from cutting the corner, but some still do it. And get owned.
As the rock is more or less shaped like a ramp, if a car hits it with a little bit of force, it gets stuck right on top of it. Locals have been reporting these incidents; they even created a Facebook group to collect images of and reactions to the repeated incidents.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
As you can see from the Facebook group, locals keep on finding amusing ways to have some fun with the now famous rock. A woman thought that she could pose like a mermaid, while a user found another creative solution:
Another user saw it as an opportunity for a hilarious meme:
The repeated location connects the images
Photographs of vehicles beside the same obstacle create a recognizable series, which explains the story's online appeal. They do not establish how every incident happened or whether the placement meets a particular design standard. The archive records the phenomenon, rather than inviting viewers to treat damaged vehicles as a challenge to recreate.
A recurring obstacle is also a design question
The photographs show why the same location became recognizable online. They also raise questions about visibility, the turning path and the surrounding layout that a joke cannot answer. Describing each incident cautiously avoids assuming identical causes or assigning a driver’s character from a picture of a vehicle after it became stuck.
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Rocko, the West Maple rock
The boulder sits on a curb in a parking lot at West Maple Road and North 156th Street in northwest Omaha, Nebraska, placed there to stop people driving over the curb. Its slope means drivers of taller vehicles often cannot see it, and it gets caught between their wheels. In late 2019 more than a dozen drivers ended up on top of it, and one towing firm, Arrow Towing, answered at least six calls in six weeks. The Facebook group “The W Maple Omaha Rock”, started on 21 October 2019, had more than 20,000 followers by November; fans nicknamed the boulder “Rocko”, and it earned a five-star rating on Google Maps. The mermaid picture came from a Little Mermaid-style photo shoot in which Caitrin Shirazi posed, photographed by Courtney Smith. In January 2021 the rock was repositioned so that it no longer sloped towards the road, and a tree was planted nearby to catch drivers’ attention.
Sources: CNN, 9 November 2019: report on the West Maple Omaha rock Wikipedia: West Maple Omaha Rock
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