Things you see driving. saw a guy lose a tire.

[vontar]

Thursday I went to visit my folks up in Clairfield TN and go scouting for Deer Season.

Things like this make me want to invest in a dash camera.

On my return trip, coming though White Oak I was following Red GMC. I was a good safe distance behind him, more then the 2 second rule. We were driving about 35-40 mph. The roads are a bit curvey in that area if you don't know. I am not certain how long I had been following that truck as it was uneventful until what happened next.

I was about to call my wife to let her know I was running late as when we got on top of the Mountain in White Oak there is generally good cell signal, when all of the sudden there was allot of sparks under that truck. I saw one of it's tires go about 50 feet into the air. It skid to a stop on it's front right rotor just leaving the road into a parking lot. I pulled in with them to check and make sure the driver and passenger were OK. They were.

After checking to make sure they where OK and seeing if there was anything I could do to help, there wasn't, I took a picture and left. They had a cell phone and called for someone to come get them. It should be noted, in this area there are allot of houses around and good cell signal. I didn't just abandon them beside the road.

Looking at it, 4 of the 5 studs broke off and one appears to have stripped off.

If you know the area they where very lucky in some regards, a couple miles back and it was nothing back curvey mountain roads very few guard rails and no places to pull off the road and more of the same a couple miles ahead. For something like that to happen, it couldn't have happened in a better place.

[gnmwilliams]

What a drag. Glad they're ok though!

[Handsome Rob]

Cheese & Crackers

That had to have been pretty scary!

[Punisher84]

Geesh. Terror alert brown material there!

[gunrunner32]

I was sitting at a light in Raleigh, NC when a newer Dodge 1500 turning left lost one of it's 20+" rims. I couldn't help but laugh at them, I don't think a truck should have big goofy rims, 17" max. It ended up being the driverside front that fell off. The Tire came to a stop in the front bumper of the Honda Civic waiting in the left turn lane of the opposing traffic. From what I would see as I drove by the rim had actually broke where is meets the hub. Crazy crap happens, I've also been behind a guy on I-75 South in Cincinnati driving along at about 70 or so when his rear axle snapped and everything from the leaf springs over came out into the median. Haven't seen too much in TN yet... only a matter of time I guess.

[laktrash]

I use to commute I-40 from freindsville to cookeville (102 miles daily)

Tractor trailer sliding on side past me in the median going other way "sparks and all"

Guy dropped drive shaft in front of me went flying by

Box truck swerved and and over corrected and went over on its side in front of me

Not to mention to see what the over the road guys do at 4:00 am

[Mr. Brooks]

That's crazy, I saw almost the same thing just a few weeks ago.

I was driving down I24 heading home after work. I was almost to my exit when I saw a fire on the side of the road and a military humvee on the shoulder with a pronounced lean to the passenger side. As I got closer I could see that the front tire was missing completely.

I stopped since I carry a fire extinguisher in my truck and if that fire wasn't put out the smoke would obscure the road and would get dangerous fast.

I got the fire out and made sure the soldiers were ok and had help on the way before I left. I guess the rotor dragging on the road sparked enough to start the grass fire.

The loose tire crossed all four lanes of traffic and ended up in the ditch on the other side of the interstate. It was VERY lucky that it didn't hit anyone. A 37" tire on a beadlocked rim could have really done some damage.

*On a good note I found a nice digital camera in the grass after I put out the fire. It didn't belong to anyone there so it came home with me. It still works well even though the screen is a little dirty from being outside for a few days.

[Murgatroy]

In an `81 Camaro I was coming home from work one day when I seized the pinion gear, snapped both c-clips and puked both axles out of the housing at around 75MPH on Pellissippi at 8am one morning coming home from work.

A couple of years later, I had an `87 Camaro that my girlfriend curbed, and didn't tell me, she snapped two studs on the passenger side. That night coming home from work I got horrible hub slap, stopped and checked and I had one stud left. Luckily Indianapolis has 24 hour parts stores, and I got the pleasure of replacing all five studs at 2am in a parking lot in the middle of December.

The simplest of issues though was when I was a kid, I was coming down Coker Creek Mountain outside of Tellico, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the driveshaft of my `77 Chevy C10 tumbling down the road behind me. My bearing at the rear end had worn down enough to lose the caps, affording the driveshaft enoug room to fall out, slide out of the tranny and go for a walk. That one was easy to stop.

I drive Toyotas now.

But man, I still love a Chevy.

[Farman]

Or when you meet the flying wheel up close and personal.. Glad to say my friend only received minor injuries.

[Punisher84]

Holy...^^^^^^^^^^

[Raoul]

I once saw two teens pulling a boat. They hit a dip in the road and the boat bounced up and off the trailer and landed directly on top of a parked car. Guess what they had forgotten...

[enfield]

I've lost a tire & wheel while driving - '68 Chevy van lost the left front wheel (the one I was sitting over). Fortunately I wasn't going more than about 20 MPH.

[I_Like_Pie]

I have seen a 18 wheeler scrape against a jersey barrier. You would think that it would push it back in the lane. Instead the whole trailer climbed the barrier came about 5 feet off the ground. pretty scary when you are behind one of them.

So when you see those weird black marks on a jersey barrier...that is likely what happened.

[Guest TargetShooter84]

Wow....scary about those jersey barriers....

[peejman]

I have seen a 18 wheeler scrape against a jersey barrier. You would think that it would push it back in the lane. Instead the whole trailer climbed the barrier came about 5 feet off the ground. pretty scary when you are behind one of them.

So when you see those weird black marks on a jersey barrier...that is likely what happened.

It's a design problem with the barriers. When the barriers were originally designed, the fender would hit the barrier before the tire. Modern cars have the tires right at the edge of the car, so the tire hits the wide base, turns into it, and climbs it. That's why you see so many roll-over wrecks on the interstate. It happens in a blink and typically rips the steering wheel out of the driver's hands.

Notice that the walls around race tracks are flat instead of wider at the base like they are on the road. Race cars (even open wheel cars) very, very rarely climb the wall and flip.

[vontar]

In short, we need more racing Tech applied to our interstate highways to make them safer. I get it.

[JAB]

My wife and I were going into Oak Ridge from Lenoir City. As we got to the first big intersection in O.R., we saw an Explorer that was headed the other direction lose one of its front tires, wheel and all. Luckily, it happened right at the red light cycle so she (and the traffic behind her) were already slowing down and the cross traffic hadn't started moving, yet. The Explorer pretty much stopped where it was, no one rear-ended it and the tire managed to roll through the intersection without hitting anything.

I was coming down the hill that is past the weigh station and just before the Watt Road exit heading west on I40 a couple of years ago. A guy in a large, older sedan (something like an old LTD type car) was driving a little erratically and my instincts told me to hang back a bit. I did so - and a few seconds later he crossed from the far right lane, across the middle lane, across the left lane (I was driving my Mustang so the left lane is where I was - the timing was such that had I not decided to slow down and hold back, my car would have been caught between his car and the concrete barrier) and scraped the driver's side of his car along the concrete barrier enough to send out a decent shower of sparks. Just as the left front tire started climbing the barrier, he jerked the wheel the other direction and managed to recover. When he got back to the center lane and was driving more or less straight, I downshifted the Mustang, hit the gas and put him well into my rearview mirror.

On Ray Mears Boulevard, my friends and I once saw an SUV do a flop onto the passenger's side after getting the driver's side tires up onto a curb that was no more than about one inch high. It was only moving about 5mph or so, slowing down to turn left and the flop was almost in slow motion. To this day I can't figure out why that happened other than there were several people in the vehicle and I guess they weren't very well distributed for weight.

Edited November 11, 2010 by JAB

[Guest Grout]

Going home one day on 75 in Chatt. say a dually lose both rear tires on the drivers side.the tires bounced across 4 lanes of rush hr traffic never hitting a single car and come to a rest against the concrete wall in the median.You couldn't have drove a needle up my ass with a sledge hammer while I was watching it.

[ZZRguy]

I drive a big truck for a living and I have seen a few things. I was driving from Columbia to Lewisburg on Hwy 50 and a Mustang going toward Columbia lost control of his car in a curve went across my lane and spun around 3 times in the grass on my shoulder and came back across the road and we hit left front fender to left front fender. Luckily (Thank the Lord), we was not going very fast by the time we hit. We were very lucky, we both drove away.

[ZZRguy]

A bunch of us from church went on a bike ride one weekend to ride the snake and the Dragon. We were on the Blue Ridge Parkway when a bear cub came out of the woods and ran right into second motorcycle in line, which turned the bear sideways for the third guy, when he hit that bear cub he and his motorcycle went down. I was the fourth in line, I had front seat view of the event and I grabbed a handful brake. I remember trying to get stopped so I would not into Josh or his motorcycle, and I as was stopping I just remember Josh sliding on the road beside me. Thank the Lord he was not hurt too bad. We got his bike fixed enough to ride to Gatlinburg, and went the next morning to get a new brake lever, rode the rest of the day with only a rear brake, and from Gatlinburg to motorcycle dealership near the 407mm on I-40.

[Garufa]

Once in college I was walking home from the Strip to my Ft. Sanders roach motel. A ratty old Ford Bronco was driving up the hill and made a right turn. The left front wheel kept going up the hill while the Bronco just stopped, unable to move. Good times.

One time I was driving through Nashville on I-40 heading west. There around Percy Priest dam I look over just in time to see the hood fly open on a beat-up primer painted Pinto station wagon. It's a good thing my old VW Squareback was faster because that idgit flew across a lane or two...blinded by his hood and a cracked windshield.

[strickj]

It's a design problem with the barriers. When the barriers were originally designed, the fender would hit the barrier before the tire. Modern cars have the tires right at the edge of the car, so the tire hits the wide base, turns into it, and climbs it. That's why you see so many roll-over wrecks on the interstate. It happens in a blink and typically rips the steering wheel out of the driver's hands.

Notice that the walls around race tracks are flat instead of wider at the base like they are on the road. Race cars (even open wheel cars) very, very rarely climb the wall and flip.

It's not a design problem. Race cars are built for high speed impact. Regular cars are not.

The barriers are designed to force a car back onto the road way instead of it going into oncoming traffic. If the barriers were flat it would probably kill you on impact.

A roll over may sound bad but they have a lot less force then a dead stop.