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Yes. Diesel fires are pretty rare. If a diesel truck crashes on the highway, the biggest risk is to the environment (it's pretty toxic), and to the road (diesel dissolves asphalt).

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Never thought about the asphalt part, but makes some sense. From what I understand, bitumen is basically the part of oil distillation left over after you distill away all the aromatic(liquid) stuff.

It's actually pretty bad, because spilt diesel makes the asphalt much softer over the coming weeks until it's pretty much a pothole filled with gravel.

It's easy to miss a small spill, and only weeks later does a hole appear in the road.

this explains so much.

So if you hate someone you can spoil a little diesel in the road right in front of their driveway so they have potholes every time they come and go

Only if you hate yourself even more, because that stuff makes its way to groundwater.

I'm going to file this one for future reference, :p. I wonder if this is why a lot of residential roads where I live are bricks instead of asphalt. Smells much less worse in summer too.

Anyway, if you really hate someone, put brake fluid on their car, it'll melt the paintwork pretty thoroughly.

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