Heard on the radio this morning that a lorry driver was killed on the M62 yesterday when he went to retrieve his wheel from the the verge that had fallen off when it exploded in his face. My thoughts go out to his family.
How can this happen? Was it something to do with the heat of the tyre & wheel? It makes you think because I’ve never heard of it before.
A lot of years back, me and a mate were running down the M1 when I saw smoke comming from one of his trailer tyres. I flagged him in on to the hard shoulder. When we looked at the tyre it was in a bad way but we thought it would last until we got to Watford Gap, about 3 miles. We had just got back into our units when the tyre exploded and sprayed the front of my unit with hot rubber. If we had been standing next to it we would both have been seriously hurt
Westie
Many years ago a wheel came off my fathers wagon while he was going around a roundabout and hit a jogger square in the chest. The man was killed instantly leaving a young wife and two small children. Understandably there was a full inquiry, it was ruled that my father was not at fault and after thorough examination of the wagon no fault was found with the maintenance so an act of god was deemed but obviously my father never forgot it
I had a rear wheel blow out on a bus once. We had to prise the poor sod sitting on the seat above it off the ceiling.
It also bent a few metal panels in the wheel arch & brought a very busy main road to a stand still due to a lack of visibility caused by the dust it dislodged.
Probably the heat, it would have disapated somewhat whilst it was moving but when it stopped the temp would have built up and just a bit of the wall would need to give way for it to explode, remember there is 120 psi, if not more when its hot and thats alot of air.
Condolences to the family.