IDAHO FALLS - "I've just never seen that bad of a job before," claims Marcia Williams.

This is what several drivers saw when they got out of their cars... tires covered in asphalt, rocks wedged between the tires, cracked windshields, and just a big mess overall.

"There is rocks flying everywhere. Out of every car. There was a little corvette that was in front of me and rocks were flying and out my rear view mirror I could see my car was throwing rocks all over," says Williams.

"Right here, right here and right there," says Teressa Allen, who showed me the cracks on her windshield.

"Rocks were flying like crazy. I was following a semi that was only doing about 30, 35, staying back and he was just blasting them and they were hitting my windshield like crazy," says Allen.

"This is the worst chip job I've ever experienced in my life," says Dan Hoarkley, who has been commuting to Idaho Falls from Shelley for 19 years.

"What are you most upset about?" I asked him.
"The possible damage it does to my car. Right now the tires are out of balance and I'm hoping that everything will clean off mine but I'm also a danger now to other cars. Because I'm going to be picking up rocks and flipping them until all this tar gets wore off the tires," says Hoarkley.

But why did this happen? To find out, I went to the Idaho Transportation Department.

"The work was done according to plans, according to specifications, but for some reason the seal coat, the chips and the asphalt pulled up on that particular stretch," says ITD's Public Information Specialist, Bruce King.

The work was contracted to a company out of Paul, ID. Right now, ITD engineers are trying to figure out what happened and get traffic moving again.

"Crews are cleaning up those globs of asphalt and rock chip that were left along the roadway," says King.

But how clean are they now? I took my car, with clean tires to Shelley and back to find out.

After the drive, I have very little to show. A huge difference from those who drove the highway this morning.

"What do you do to try and get rid of it?" I asked Hoarkley.
"That, I have no idea. Besides hoping that driving will help take it off," he responded.

The same work was done on the same day to the southbound lane, with no problems.

If you are one of many who cracked their windshield this morning, the contractors are responsible to take care of the damage.

For their information, go to the Newslinks section of our website.