Hobo Spiders can come from lots of different places.

How can you get into your car? I may have slight arachnophobia, but I saw a big hairy fuzzy black and yellow spider crawl across my dash, into the airvent above my stereo controls, and sit just inside the vent... out of smash range... and stare at me, while I was merging onto an interstate. I had shudders the whole way.
I can rationalize my fears away, but the initial shock will still put shivers up and down my back. Something about waking up with spiders on my face when I was a kid.... Man, I would be vaccuming/washing/vaccuming/fumigating/etc etc that thing until the only thing living in there was a cockroach!

Looks like baby headcrab. You must hunt down the big momma headcrab and slay it with explosives.

Bravo on posting the picture.

I look forward to more "WHY GOD WHY DID HE HAVE TO POST A PICTURE?" style posts.

These threads are always fun.

"Spider poison is people poison??!!"

On my very last day of highschool I was driving off the campus one last time when I noticed a tickle on the inside of my left forearm. Turning it over I found the nastiest, biggest, hairiest sumbitchin spider I ever saw crawling there. One quick flick out the window took care of that and didn't do a thing to break the mood.

Probably the biggest freakout I've ever had with spiders was on my second quarry dive for my scuba certification. I was about 25 feet underwater when I realized that I had a spider IN MY MASK. It took extraordinary self control not to drop my weights and surface.

That's what I ended up doing. I'm sort of paranoid anyway and always carry N+1. I had another mask hanging off my BC and just put that on instead.

I guess the first picture makes them look bigger than they actually are. Here is a better one for reference.

The ones in my car are slightly bigger than that.

Here are some of the bites.

Thank you.

You could try setting up some spider traps. It sucks that they're actually getting on you and biting you. Keep in mind that spiders absolutely hate moving air... Not that they run from it, it just pisses them off. If you have your vents blowing on your legs you might try turning them off and see if you get fewer bites.

I get a lot of these guys in my house every year, and I've never really been able to do much about it. Then again, I've never tried very hard.

Sounds like you may have a nest of them somewhere in your car. The worst freak out story I've heard was a female coworker who was driving home after work one night. She was merrily going on about 50mph when apparently a nest of newborn baby spiders that had been in her steering column burst open. She had hundreds (she claimed thousands, but I call foul) of baby spiders spill out over her legs (did I mention she was wearing a skirt?) and feet. She wasn't bitten, these were babies after all.. but the oogy factor was enough that she nearly killed herself in an accident trying to pull over so she could get out of the car and she didn't come into work the next day because she couldn't bring herself to get behind the wheel again.

I was a paramedic for a while and there's many spiders (or any insects really) that I'd have no problem crushing in my hands, gloved or not. Black Widows and Brown Recluse spiders would definitely not make the list. Now stomp on and dance a jig, that I whole heartedly endorse. I'm the biggest wimp when it comes to spiders because of a childhood incident. I shiver just thinking about it..

In Mississippi, we have the massive "golden spinner" spiders that will build a web that could be 4-6 feet wide. Well, when I was young, I enjoyed riding my three-wheeler around on the farm -- in and around the hay bails (big round ones, not the squaty square ones). I turned a corner one time and went straight through the web. Besides the fact that it nearly pulled me off the three-wheeler, I had this huge (but relatively harmless) spider on me. I have been quite terrified of them since.

I thought I was getting away from the bad ones moving out to Wyoming, but last fall while sitting at my desk, I noticed these black legs crawling up the wall from behind my desk at work. I thought to myself "self, that looks familiar." Sure enough -- black widow. And then I come to find out, like the Penny Arcade above, that we also have Hobo Spiders. These are like Brown Recluses on steroids. Not only do they look like ordinary house spiders, but they are apparently much more deadly than either B.R. or B.W.'s. Ugh.

At least we DON'T have poisonous snakes....

I had to check my arms and legs 5 times while reading this thread.

Spiders are absolutely a-okay with me unless they appear to be the dangerous type (widows or recluses). All others that sneak inside the house tend to get the catch-and-release privilege with me. I'm from SoCal, so I was accustomed to coping with black widows. We were taught a healthy respect for them, and we were also taught to destroy them without hesitation, on sight. We had them here on the outside of our NC home, but I routinely go on a search and destroy mission once a month.

But I love, love love golden garden/orb weaver spiders. We had a bunch outside the house a couple of summers ago. I grew so attached to these gigantic, exotic looking things that I named every one of them and was a little sad when they mated, laid egg sacs and died. For the record, they are the largest spiders I have ever seen in a place I lived.

This is a cruddy picture, but here's Marta on our deck. The photo doesn't do her justice - she was our largest, had to be 3 1/2 inches long or so (legs included) and bright yellow and black. Awesome spider.

Done