Close call with runaway big rig wheel

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The plunge

The plunge

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 17, 2015
Posts
64
Location
California
Hello All,

Just thought i'd share a story. About 2 months ago we left our trailer in Arizona (thank god) and headed to CA for a wedding. About 20 miles East of Barstow on interstate 40, heading West, we were in the fast lane cruising at around 77mph, just passed a cluster of vehicles and was head of the pack. I noticed movement up ahead at about 11 o'clock (looking straight) at about 30 or so feet in the air. As I focused on it I realized it was a semi/bus/RV wheel and tire that had come from a rig heading East. It was on a collision course with us coming in at an angle, I made a judgement call, braked and veered left off the freeway and onto the median now going about 40 watching for ruts. It, thankfully stayed its course and passed in front of us and went off the road. There was a semi to my right.
I believe everyone behind us saw me manuvuer and slowed, it hit no one. This thing was on an all out bounce and roll, there was hardly any wobble, lucky for me. Had we been traveling at night, I doubt we or anyone else would have seen it.

Blessings were counted.
Safe travels
 
Wow, talk about dodging a bullet....errrrrr tire!

Now imagine being in a self driving car.  This is the prime reason I think there are going to be a lot of problems.
 
Arch Hoagland said:
Wow, talk about dodging a bullet....errrrrr tire!

Now imagine being in a self driving car.  This is the prime reason I think there are going to be a lot of problems.
Click to expand...

Well, it was a self driving tire that he nearly collided with.
 
I was behind and to the left of a pickup that lost a wheelbarrow at 70 miles an hour.  I veered to the left shoulder and braked as it went by. It didn't skid, it bounced and spun. Deadly if going through a windshield.
 
Never seen that with a Semi Tire but I have seen it with a light truck tire.. Same thing, it missed me.

My brother was not so lucky.. It was not just a tire but the attached half rear axle from a Mach 1 Mustang.. It hig him in the right front fender poking a hole in his Mach 1 Mustang.. Yup. his axle.

One of the very few times he was driving UNDER the speed limit and what's more he not only had a witness but the tow truck response time was near instant (Said witness being the driver of same).
 
Back in '73, as the family was moving to Calif, we were all piled in our Olds Vista cruiser going down a street in San Jose to see the new home. A tire came off a car in front of us, bounced, bounced and bounced again, just missing our car with all of us in it. I'll never forget...
 
Shortly after one of our secretaries retired a few years ago, she and her husband were returning home from a trip in their motorhome, going westbound on I-8. The wheel from an eastbound truck came off, rolled and bounced across the E/B # 1 lane, across the median, across the # 1 westbound lane and smashed through their motorhome's windshield, killing her husband instantly (He was driving.) She was injured in the subsequent crash.

The truck driver, who was not charged criminally with anything, said he didn't even know the wheel had come off until he was tracked down by the CHP. Cherish your time together, because as they say, "Tomorrow is promised to no one."

Kev
 
This reminds me of an incident I had about 25 years ago, I was driving west bound on I-20 in Alabama, when an east bound small U-Haul trailer broke loose and crossed the median and then went air born as it crossed in front of my car, I can still picture being at about eye level with the right side wheel as it crossed just in front of my car before crashing down on the right shoulder and tumbling into the west bound right side ditch which I saw in my rear view mirror.
 
Arch Hoagland said:
Wow, talk about dodging a bullet....errrrrr tire!

Now imagine being in a self driving car.  This is the prime reason I think there are going to be a lot of problems.
Click to expand...
I ruminated that very thought that evening. I know we were extremely lucky, can't think of how many times you look away even for a second, I just happened to be looking straight ahead and focused....in the daylight. Not sure I'd ever catch a break like that again.
 
I remember when I was about 12 years old riding in the back seat of a car. All of a sudden, the back left hand side of then car dropped and all we saw was a wheel bouncing and rolling along the side of the car faster than we were going. It crossed in front of us and rolled out into the woods. We of course stopped right away, got out and started looking for it. We found it about 100' in the woods. The hub cap was still on it and all the lug nuts were inside. That was terrifying.
 
I had a young man (18 or 19) in a Nissan pickup almost take out the corner of my house about 10-15 years ago (it is an older house built in 1902, and is only 12 ft from the edge of the front porch to the side walk).  He had just came from Wal-Mart 2 miles away after buying new tires, when the back left wheel lost all its lug nuts, causing him to make a sudden left turn into my driveway missing the corner of the house by about 5 feet.  He called his uncle to come over and help get him back on the road, they found 3 of the lug nuts in the street within a hundred feet or so, jacked it up, bent the brake shield back out of the way put the tire on with the 3 lug nuts and drove it off to an auto parts store a few blocks away to get 2 more lug nuts.
 
Isaac-1 said:
I had a young man (18 or 19) in a Nissan pickup almost take out the corner of my house about 10-15 years ago (it is an older house built in 1902, and is only 12 ft from the edge of the front porch to the side walk).  He had just came from Wal-Mart 2 miles away after buying new tires, when the back left wheel lost all its lug nuts, causing him to make a sudden left turn into my driveway missing the corner of the house by about 5 feet.  He called his uncle to come over and help get him back on the road, they found 3 of the lug nuts in the street within a hundred feet or so, jacked it up, bent the brake shield back out of the way put the tire on with the 3 lug nuts and drove it off to an auto parts store a few blocks away to get 2 more lug nuts.
Click to expand...

I would have called Wal-Mart and had them pay for towing the truck back to their facility.
 
We were returning home, from our vacation, on I5 and a car passed us. There were suit cases on top of the car and were not secured very well, I said to the wife, that guy is going to lose his luggage. Just as I said that 2 suit cases came flying towards us, as they hit the pavement they split, 1 down the drivers side and the other down the passenger side. Talk about heavenly intervention.

Bob 
 
i wasn't lucky at all. back in 1992 i was coming home from work at 11:30pm on the interstate in the middle of 3 lanes. the superslab had a concrete median about 4ft. high. up ahead came a tire off a semi going north. at first it looked like a big man with his arms and legs flinging outward. when it hit the concrete it formed back into a perfect semi tire and wheel.
it hit back down right in front of me and bounced up and hit the bumper and grill.
it stopped my dodge dakota dead in it's tracks and hit so hard it folded the hood in half and also pushed the brake master cylinder through the battery.
it tore the left manifold off the engine and broke the standard transmission.
if that had hit a foot higher it would have tore the cabin off.
when all the lights went out because of the battery damage i heard all kinds of horns blowing behind me and i looked at the mirror to see what was going to kill me and wouldn't you know it that mirror fell in the floor.
 
wb6kwt said:
We were returning home, from our vacation, on I5 and a car passed us. There were suit cases on top of the car and were not secured very well, I said to the wife, that guy is going to lose his luggage. Just as I said that 2 suit cases came flying towards us, as they hit the pavement they split, 1 down the drivers side and the other down the passenger side. Talk about heavenly intervention.

Bob
Click to expand...

Were you able to glean anything good from the debris?
 
Just recently on the TV program Live PD on A&E there was a story when a California HP was called to the scene of an accident. He saw only a pickup against the median wall when he arrived and the driver and passengers on the side of the road.  He asked them what they hit and they said they did not know.  Further investigation showed a complete wheel assembly in the middle of the road and that was what had been hit.  But when the trooper looked up to an overpass he saw a semi truck cab had slammed into the overpass wall and that was indication of a head on accident above.  A wrong way driver had hit the semi and then went completely over the wall losing a wheel assembly in the process. After looking further the trooper found the entire car on the ground below the overpass with its deceased driver inside.

Bill

PS:  My boo boo.  It was an Arizona HP not California.
 
Several years ago I merged onto a busy freeway a few car lengths behind a short bed pickup carrying a 4x8 ft piece of plywood.  Since it didn't fit in the short bed the leading edge was propped up on the cab.

Suddenly the rope holding it in place broke, and the plywood sailed skyward.  I quickly estimated it's trajectory and floored the accelerator.

The plywood sailed over my car and landed flat on the pavement in the space between my car and the car behind me.  It ran over the plywood without any trouble.
 
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