Tire blew next to me...

I've had a few blowouts. Some were like grenades and took out mud flaps and air bags, others I never even knew it.

For the explosive blowouts I'd recommend that EVERY driver of a motor vehicle watch these videos to get an understanding of what kind of power truck tires have when they explode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nl_lDna7E4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKlJJqHFfoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkiz1uWCF0Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1DTU2w4r7Y

Hanging around next to a truck is NOT a good idea...

 

Very good. Very. It gives one pause in that these (with the exception of the inflating ones) are catastrophic tire failure which is usually (not always) cased by under inflation which causes over heating and then catastrophic chord failure. KABLEWIE and the ensuing consequences.

Dude in number 1 did a helluva job not flipping. That was some Herbie The Love Bug rail riding.

Numbers 2 and 3, my first OTJ injury to work as a Safety Manager was a shop guy. He was actually using the cage but at one point he has to disconnect the air from the valve stem and while he was doing that it came off the rim. His hand and wrist were inside the cage doing the disconnect. Shattered his hand and wrist. Ten surgeries and it still looks like a claw and they had to fix (fuse) the bones in a "position of function" because he can only open and close the fingers and thumb like half an inch. Everything was too tore up to put back completely functional. Boss asks me if I thought he was "milking" the injury. "Worker's Comp Leach." "Um, No Sir. You ever seen a tire blow during mounting? It's like a bomb. His hand was between the tire and the rails. Nothing he could do. He followed procedure. It's just one of those unfortunate things. Pretty sure it's genuinely smashed to hell and back. I don't suspect malingering at all." I'm not slamming cages at all. Had it not been for the cage it would have been the rim to his entire upper body and a fatality.

Dude in number 3 was just practicing his Kung Foo flip. (TOTALLY kidding there).

Last one; God be with that driver. I hope he was OK. Sidebar; We slam the megas all day long here but did you notice who stopped in addition to the video driver? Conway and JB. Two of the mega megas running governed trucks and e-logs. They probably were late on their loads as a result of being a good Samaritan. Kudos to those two guys too.

 

The article said AirFrance said they were losing money, but British Airways was not. Likely AirFrance lost a bundle in the ensuing lawsuits


What probably pushed the all over the edge, tho, was the cost of fuel, followed by the insane maintenance costs for those aircraft. They were designed in a time when no thought was given to the human end of maintenance.

 

I want to know the failure mode on this one, cuz the tire, wheel, and probably half the front suspension went flying, right into his chest and head...

 

That's true, back in the 90's I was going to meet some of my brother & tow sisters for the very 1st time out in Tennessee, Alabama, & Georgia, going though Little Rock a truck up ahead of me had a blow out & here it came towards me. Thankfully there was hardly any traffic & I was able to dodge the big piece of tire.

Plus, i was not tailgating, I was a long ways behind the truck but when pieces of tire comes flying off at 65 plus MPH they can travel a very long ways.

If I could not have changed lanes I believe that big pieces of tire would have come into the center of my windshield & that would have ruined a very good trip.

 

I was with an SVT enthusiasts group a few years back, going to Motorsport Ranch in Cresson; one of the guys had his 2000 Cobra-R clone on a flatbed car trailer, towing it with his HD F150, driving about 65mph. One of the tires swelled, caught the lip of the fender, and the fender peeled the tread right off, catapulting it about 20ft into the air. The carnage to the fender was bad, too.

 

I think what people don't understand about truck tire blow outs is the air pressure in truck tires. They are used to 32 psi in their car tires and a blowout rarely throws rubber all over creation. A truck tire is inflated to 3x that pressure.

 

We run super singles on our trailers(425 wide) and one blew up on me a few weeks back and my oh my I've never heard a bang that loud from a tire!! It did A LOT of damage to my trailer and sent a plastic fender flying across three lanes of traffic!! No one got hurt or cars damaged so that's all that matters!

 

British Airways buys its Concordes outright[edit]

An Air France Concorde at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1987
By around 1981 in the UK, the future for Concorde looked bleak. The British government had lost money operating Concorde every year, and moves were afoot to cancel the service entirely.

As you can see above, it seems that British Government was loosing money too, every year.

 

They know. May not want to address it, but they know.