It's going to be months before this comes up again in these parts (New England)... but from time to time I have come across snakes that presumably ventured out onto the asphalt in the morning to bask, only it got hot fast and they wound up overheating. Obviously lots of them get run over, too. But I've saved a few; at that point they are extremely warm to the touch and barely responsive. But when I move them off the road and they get into cool shade, they will eventually perk up and finally slither off. Some of them not so much.
I've always sort of wondered what's going on when this happens, because it seems odd that an animal that has evolved a basking behavior would have such a poorly calibrated mechanism to avoid overheating. Is it basically that their natural environment (before humans put down pavement) doesn't normally contain any surfaces that get that hot that quickly? A bare rock in a clearing in the woods may get warm, but not usually as warm as a road because they aren't as dark and usually have at least intermittent shade.
But plenty of other regions south of here do have surfaces that easily get hotter than our roads do, and more quickly. Are snakes in those regions (particularly desert SW) less likely to cook themselves on road surfaces because they're adapted for surfaces that heat up quickly? Or do roads just heat up that much more, and get that much hotter than naturally occurring surfaces, so snakes cook themselves there too?