Unbelieveable Tour Bus Driver!

[zubzub]

I've had the pleasure of having the right front tire blow out twice. Both times on the innerstate at 60+ mph.
Once in a E150 ford van & last year in a 3/4 ton suburban pulling a 32' camper.

Both times, the tires looked fine with no weather checks & air pressures were good, but they were 6+ years old.
Both times, I didn't leave my lane until I wanted to.
Both times, I was steering with 2 fingers touching the wheel when the tire decided to meet Elvis.
Both times, I had been driving for 4+ hours, so I wasn't exactly a fresh & focused driver.

I'm wondering what all the fuss is about blowouts? Maybe I was lucky? Maybe I've got good instincts & don't create a problem by jerking the wheel?

Had a right rear blow out at 70 mph while in a long right hand curve.  I was driving a sedan fully loaded (the car that is) and when it happened, and immediately it felt like the steering linkage had broken.  car sat way back and I may have been only steering with one  wheel tons of input was required to keep it in line, fishtailed hard left then right ...I was just calming it down when the tire came off the rim and the car did a 360, finally had slowed enough to maintain control, pullled over, had a pee and changed the tire.
 I talked to my uncle about this (he was an engineer who used to do accident analysis on the autobahn) he told me that in his experience rear blowouts in curves were way worse than front blowouts, he said in a straight line rear blowouts were less destabilizing.
Since being on this board I have noticed the posting about accident from front blowouts, makes sense as a rear blow out is mitigated by the dually, wait tell you all start driving those maxi rears.......
more grist for the mill.



On a similar note, a minivan started to change lanes into me as I was right beside them in heavy traffic on I-95 at 70 mph. When the driver saw me, they jerked the steering wheel so hard they went on 2 wheels. I don't know if they were one of the several that hit the grass that day behind us.

Some people can drive, others merely hang on for dear life.

[Damn Yankee]

Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is over. The guy taking the video is an idiot that could wreak (or save) a lot of lives. He could have said to the driver, excuse me, could you please do the paperwork after we stop and pay attention to the road. End of story. If I were Sam T's employer and saw this video I'd terminate him immediately! cause if he ever got in a accident it would be big ammo for a law suit cause it proves he does not pay attention. If future employers ever saw the video (slim chance) he'd never get hired. Once this stuff is on the internet it's there forever! Why can't people just speak up?

[kyle4501]

I know every incident has different circumstances . . . .


I've had rear blowouts with & without a trailer. Had 3 rear wheel nuts back off once & the 2 studs snapped off & let the tire roll around in the wheel well before it worked it's way out & passed me.

With all of those instances, minimal steering input was used to keep things straight.

With the trailer, all that happened was a LOT of noise & the rear corner of the suburban dropped some, but otherwise it was a non incident.

The worst was when the wheel was rolling around in the wheel well, there was lots of wiggle from that  , but still minimal steering input.



We had a car that the rear axle was out of alignment (rear tracked 2" off the front). With that car, if you ever locked up the brakes, you were going for a wild ride as a spectator only.


I'm thinking it may be the initial over correction that causes so much steering input. Could be a misalignment issue too . . .

When the crap hits the fan, I usually try to decide which way & how far to go before I start moving.

Maybe it's because I have lots of practice driving back off the shoulder of the road . . . . 
Maybe It's because I paid attention in all those vehicle dynamics classes. . . .

OR, maybe I'm just lucky . . . .