I nearly had an accident a couple of weeks ago because of a low-rider with spinning rims.
I was approaching an intersection on my way home from work, and the stoplight ahead was green on my side. Just before I entered the intersection I spotted a car to my right, waiting at the cross street for the light to change. In that instant my brain registered that the other car was still moving, about to broadside me. So I slammed on my brakes to avoid what I thought was an imminent collision. Turns out the car had spinning rims on the wheels that made it look as if it were moving when it was, in fact, sitting still. Had there been another car behind me when I slammed on my brakes (fortunately there wasn’t), there might have been a serious accident.
Am I just being an uptight regulation-happy meddler about this, or should someone take a serious look at banning spinning rims from city streets?
While I haven’t had a slam on my breaks moment yet, they have startled me a few times (I assume that is the whole point). I think that I am kind of with you on this.
You guys just don’t have the proper apprecaition for the finer things in life. One of the things that I like best about spinners (in the local nomenclature) is that they invariably get scraped/hit when someone tries to parallel park and then they spin at different rates, or stop spinning altogether.
It’s kind of sad to see people spend so damn much money on these things. In some cases, they’re worth more than the car they’re on. That and driving around Chicago in the winter, you’re liable to hit a heretofore unseen pothole and crack your $800 dubs.
I think that it’s an amazing effort on the part of the companies who sell them. Just when you thought that there was no other way to milk a few bucks from the FastNFurious idiots who already spent untold buckets of cash on fart can mufflers, neon lights, and useless wings, someone invents spinners. Brilliant!
When I see those things I am always struck by the same thought:
“when the spinner shears off and impales a pedestrian (throwing star like) who will get sued, and how much time will the owner serve?”.
Heh. For some reason the first thing I thought about when I saw the thread title was that they’re a danger of slicing into other cars’ tires, like the ones on James Bond’s Aston Martin in Goldfinger.
I had to dodge bits and pieces of one of those spinning wheels one night: I was heading west, they were heading east, and suddenly there’s stuff flying off of one of their tires. :eek:
I had no way of knowing what kind of stuff that spinning wheel was made of, and no way of knowing if it was just that part coming off. I also had no ‘safe path’ to dodge the debris with: there was traffic behind and to the side of me, and the car with the formerly-spinning wheel was in the way to the left.
Thankfully, the main part of the spinner thingy bounced across the road before anyone hit it. I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the wheel: when I looked back, my view was mostly blocked by traffic but I did see the guy pulling off to the side.
Overall though, I find they make it very hard to tell exactly what the car is doing. Are they at a stop? Are they slowly creeping up on me? Is that wheel looking wobbly because the spinner is out of alingment or is it because the wheel is about to fall off?
I’m just not sure if this is something severe enough to justify a ban, but it does warrant a closer look into the safety issues.
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Nope. After a certain amount of time at a stop, they start to slow down. And when the driver runs over potholes or hits a curb parallel parking, they tend to get knocked out of alignment which really screws them up. One time, I saw a car with spinners doing 70+ and the spinners looked as if they were standing still (i.e. tire not rotating).
Why not put LEDs on a normal rim, with a little computer control you could make them draw spirograph type images as you drove allong. That would be much cooler than spinning rims, and cost a lot less.
Are they $859 to $1,199 EACH … or is that for a set of four?!
I’m not suprised they’re so expensive. I had to buy a plain old simple hubcap for my minivan and it cost $25, from one of those hubcap stores. The dealer wanted $72! For a piece of plastic painted metal-color. I’m still fuming.
I hate the stupid things, and I hate them even more now that I know how much money people are wasting on them. They certainly appeal to my children, who are 7 and 9. About the age level, I’d say, that’s appropriate. :rolleyes:
