TIRE!
 

I was driving just outside of Nashville today on I-40 and a tire and wheel came bouncing across the divider from the other direction heading our way. I was in the second lane from the left. It cleared the left lane and made it to my lane. I was hoping it would keep on going but alas, it decided to stay in my lane. Heading right for us like it had our name on it. The left lane was blocked and I was unsure of the right lane, and remembered the advice from Planeteer's about hitting the deer. So I held steady, slowed down as much as I could and rammed it. Unfortunately I was driving my wife's cousin new Sequoya. Crunch goes the front end. I also managed to propel the tire forward where a Honda Civic ran into it and knocked out her radiator. Luckily no one was hurt.

How the heck does a tire and wheel come across the barrier wall of an Interstate? I didn't notice any huge wreck in the other side or anything. Maybe it fell off a truck. It was a fairly new tire and the wheel was off (ironically) another small Honda.

Well if it was a Toyota wheel, it would be easy to explain, as it would most certainly be from one accelerating out of control and exploding into eleventy billion pieces as it smashed into the other side of the barrier wall at full speed.

But a Honda? Ya got me.

Ouch. Glad you're OK, even if the car has seen better days.

Pirates are better

Damn CD, I'm glad you were able to slow down and weren't hurt. That had to be a WTF moment.

I was pretty calm when it happened, because I've seen stuff in the interstate before (like an extension ladder falling off a truck). My plan was to just let it bounce on by, but then after about a second (these things always happen in slow motion) I realized that it had our name on it.

I had a tire from a semi fly off into my windshield at about 70 mph once in Arkansas. Yes, I am lucky to be alive.

The night before I said to a buddy I was driving with that it was odd that we'd seen so many shredded truck tires along the side of the road as we drove through Arkansas yet hadn't seen one come off a truck.

The State Trooper who came along said same thing had happened the week beforeon the same stretch of road and the woman driving the car had been decapitated.

Yeah, I shuddered a bit.

Glad no one was hurt. Those types of things can kill people.

In the early days of our company, my wife and I were doing seat belt observations on a street corner in Colorado Springs when a disembodied tire came rolling down the road. We watched it roll by at relatively high speed and that thing went forever. It probably made it another quarter mile before it fell over. Eventually some dude came in search of it, but we never even saw where it came from.

Holy cow. Did it come through the windshield or did it carom off? That'd make a person get their affairs in order.

This tire did a high bounce when it was trying to figure out which lane to settle in. That could have definitely come through the windshield.

I saw a truck that was jacked up about a foot (so some very expensive tires/wheel) lose a tire like that on Dodge St in Omaha. The truck was heading West and the tires crossed over the East side, went down into the grass and right into the big papio (?) creek just west of 680. It was sort of surreal watching this truck fall down on its wounded leg as the tire just bounced down the road.

Shit dude. Glad you're OK. The rest is what you buy insurance for.

I saw one of those incidents last week driving on a two-lane country road. The passenger-side front wheel just popped off of an oncoming El Camino. Car goes out of control, veers into my lane & came inches from a head-on with the Ryder truck in front of me. I stopped to help, the Ryder just kept right on going. That was so close! Somebody cudda died...