Driving south on I-65 this morning behind a semi. The truck (not at fault) spit something at me from beneath its rear wheels: the tread of an entire semi tire; I had never seen a scrap that big on the road before and certainly never run one over. I didn’t have time to react and it destroyed the bumper of my new car. The incident could easily have been much worse.
I don’t see how a truck driver can blow a tire and just let it sit in the middle of the interstate where it will cause damage to someone’s vehicle or cause a serious accident. That section of I-65 was littered with huge scraps of tires for miles, most off to the side of the road but not, as I experienced, all.
On a positive note, Progressive insurance has been incredibly responsive and good.
You have my sympathy for your ruined bumper, but really, what do you expect the truckers to do? Pull over and run into the freeway to retrieve the tread?
I have to wonder - would the driver necessarily know he blew out a tire on his trailer? I’ve never been in a big rig, so I have no idea what kind of feedback they get from their load.
But I’ve got to agree - someone needs to be diligent about getting hunks of blown tires off the road. Them things are scary! :eek: Especially when I’m in my little Scion.
It probably wasn’t from a blowout. It was probably a case of the tread pealing off the tire. (Happens more often with retreads, I think, but could be mistaken.) The driver probably didn’t know it had happened until he was parked and had a chance to look his rig over.
And as FairyChatMom said, I’d also guess that the driver would miss one tire blowing. I was towing my car behind a rental truck, once, and wouldn’t have known that the car had blown a tire if another car hadn’t flagged me. Those trucks have lots of tires for a reason.
I’ll always be grateful to the guys who flagged me.
They just need to outlaw recaps, simple as that, and screw the whining from the trucking companies over cost. If one of those “road gators” caused a fatal accident the company in question well deserves to have its ass sued off.
I agree. Pass the cost on to the customers, whatever, but the times for having a 20-pound piece of rubber and steel flying up into your windshield surely must be at an end.
I’m with you on that one, man. In Vegas, those turds are everywhere. Some kids I know call them tire snakes. I don’t know if it’s retreads or what , but man, I can’t tell you how many pickup bed skins I’ve sold because of those suckers. You just have to run them over. Rush hour traffic is so tight you can’t see them coming. Good thing I sell fenders and such.
I can understand about the peeling and not knowing. But something has to be done, quite frankly, if my wife (who is from Japan and just not a very cool-headed driver) encountered the same situation today, I shudder to think what would have happened. I was able to assess the situation enough at least not to freak out (probably should have braked).
I don’t remember serious tire shit being all over the road like this in the 1970s and 1980s. It seems like sometime in the 1990s, though, it was everywhere. Is that an accurate perception?
More trucks on the road every year. People want stuff and they want it now. People don’t want to pay more for getting it there and now so the trucking companies become more efficient and more thrifty. The trucks run round the clock by multiple drivers so rack up miles faster. The drivers don’t spend the time filing out reports to keep their truck/tires in good condition.
It is much cheaper to recap a tire then to buy a new one. Recapped tires are more likely to blow out. Recaps are not allowed on the front tires and I think there is a max allowed on the tractor because it could effect control if they go. The DOT expects recaps to blow out and finds it acceptable to go flying all over the roads as long as the rig maintains control while doing it. I suppose the government could put more effort into restricting the cheaper recaps but the lobby against doing so is sizable. Such restriction would cost drivers there jobs do to cost. The teamsters don’t look kindly on drivers losing jobs.
Drivers need to pay closer attention to their tire pressures.
Underinflated tires run hot, and it’s not unheard of to pick up a loaded trailer and find a tire completely flat. If it’s a recapped tire and you drive with it flat because you failed to check, then it will most likely fly apart before too long.
If the failing tire is on the power unit, you will feel it. On a trailer, not so much. During the day, you might see something in a mirror to cause a stop and check, but at night, not likely. I’ve mentioned via CB to other drivers about a sneaker that looks bad when passing them or being passed, and they will always stop to check it out.
Maybe independant owner-operators work that way, but they make up a small minority of truck drivers.
I was an owner-operator, but I was leased to a company, which means I pulled their trailers and followed their rules.
The rules mandated by the DOT, which required me to log one-half hour “on-duty, not driving” at the beginning of each day, or immediately after picking up a loaded trailer, at which time I was to perform a pre-trip inspection of the equipment.
A lot of drivers don’t do the inspection, cheat on their logs and use that half-hour as additional driving time.
That’s their fault.
Sure, there are plenty of places that sell inferior recaps, but I bet 50% of the road debris from recaps coming apart could be eliminated if drivers would just take the time to inspect their equipment.
I was behind a semi that was in the process of losing a tire. The tire was smoking, small chunks were falling off, and IIRC, there were sparks from the exposed rim.
I was paranoid that a huge chunk would come flying off and hit me. I passed that truck ASAP. I tried flashing my lights, but didn’t know how to tell the driver what was gone.
They can’t normally change them themselves. They call a guy out to change it. Many towing companies offer the service. There are companies that specialize in it. The trucks and tires are very heavy it is usually necessary to have the right equipment. Sometimes they can such the outside tire on an empty trailer but the response time of a specialist and speed with the right tools would get them going faster.
If it caught your bumper, you were too freaking close. Sorry, but such things happen. That, and the limited visibility you have are excellent reasons not to tailgate big trucks.
I’ve seen two such events happen in front of me, and one in the next lane FROM A MOTORCYCLE. The one in the next lane caught me with a bit of debris, the ones in front of me I was able to dodge, because I was not tailgating.
I’ve also experienced a tread seperation on a vehicle I was driving, and that tire was not a retread.
A little off the subject - A few weeks ago I was on the freeway, about 1/4 mile behind a flatbed hauling building supplies., when it dropped something (lime? grout?). Whatever it dropped, it made a perfectly opaque white smokescreen - you should have seen the other drivers on the freeway freak out! Luckly, no one was hurt. The driver pulled over after dropping some more stuff, and as I passed him I could see him cursing…
I think I had enough time to slam on the brakes or dodge it but did not process what it was until it was too late. In the sense that I probably could have avoided it one way or another, I guess it was my fault. In the sense that it was an object that should not have been on the road in the first place and required of me unusual driving skills, it was not my fault.
I was not tailgating the truck. Had the truck slammed on its breaks I would not have hit it.
Over the years I have seen many a big rig carrying an unmounted tire in a rack beneath the trailer. As in, just a tire - no wheel. I happened to be thinking about this as I drove home last night, and quickly noted two examples within a few minutes.
