Steer tires blowing going downhill or on a curve?

The problem with using the Johnson bar is that when you are on dry, straight roads you can get away with it, but on curves or in rain or snow if you lock up the brakes you will enter a jack knife skid that you won't have enough steering control to get out of.

As us humans tend to lose fine motor control in panicked situations when our monkey brains take over it is generally considered too risky to teach.

Of the two typical responses, Light acceleration and turning into the jack knife skid for recovery, only acceleration is an option with a steer tire blowout.

Note that acceleration is also risky with jack knife skids, as the trailer is pushing sideways on the drives and you don't know how much traction you have left until you exceed it.

So the general recommendation is to not touch the hand valve except for testing trailer service brakes

 

Amen to every word, full jake+break pedal lightly and steer to the shoulder.. or medium, or just stop in lane.. anywhere?

No gas pedal, no "save the wheel", stupid. Yes, breaking will lock the rim, but it will slide on the rubber. Blown tire wheel will not have as much of the ground pressure as a good one due to a load spread level on frame with drives, so it will just pull harder to the side. I guess

 

Seagreg = troll first you recommend popping the parking brake now you think the hand brake is too dangerous why don’t you go back to winch brakes ( which I think don’t exist)

 

If you’re in an automatic transmission, squeeze them cheeks tight and pray. In a manual transmission, try and downshift and use your accelerator to ride the “wave” and slow down as best you can and get out of travel lanes onto the shoulder or median. You will probably scare the crap out of any vehicle thats close to you which they will likely freak out and crash themselves. Just try not to hit anyone. If nothing from your truck or the truck itself doesn’t hit them and they crash, that’s on them. Going down a steep grade its hard to tell you what to do, there’s really no good outcome other than luckiing out having a run away truck ramp close by. They always say prepare for the unexpected but this is a hard one to actually be prepared for. Ive never had a steer tire blowout in over 20 years on the road and have never seen another truck with a steer tire blowout as it is happening. Now I have seen trucks with steer tire blowouts after they’ve stopped, and the damage it does looks very significant. Good luck though and hope it never happens to you or anyone else.