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Last night while driving home from work, my dad had an incident on the road: apparently, he ran over something on the road and the front left tire proceeded to shread itself only minutes later. Behold the kind of damage a shreded steel-belted tire can do to a vehicle travelling at at 80km/h. All things considered, he's extremly lucky the van didn't flip over, considering the inherent top-heaviness of minivans.

Still, I have to wonder how long he was driving on that for it to cause that kind of damage. At 80km/h though I doubt it could have taken long...


1)Overall view of the damage. Bear in mind that there was no collision: all this tamage was caused by the shreaded tire. As should be obvious, that's the spare mounted...


2)A closer view of the damage: note the hanging wires. The signal light was ripped clean from it's mount...


3)A view of the rear of the wheel well


4)A view inside the wheel well. Not how the shock strut has been polished by the shreaded tire. Also note the brake line: very lucky that wasn't cut as well...


5)The tire itself (what's left of it anyway)...

When he bought that van 2½ years ago, I noticed it came with Firestone tires and I warned him about how notorious Firestones were to shreding themselves for no apparent reason, but he never got around to changing them. Well now I don't think he will waste any time getting new tires after he has it towed to the dealership for repair...

I can believe that the tire did all that. That tire rubber is heavy and it's steal belted. Also 80 km's/hr doesn't sound or feel fast but when there is heavy rubber whipping around and around, get the hell out of the way. It would probably sever someone's arm off. Add to that, cars are not made as well as they used to be either.

Glad to hear your dad is ok and that he'll be changing his tires, Firestones are bad.

I thought the Firestones=Crap had been discredited and it had been found that it was instead the SUV's handling and top heavy nature that destroyed the tires as well as the the way they were driven that caused the tires to be destroyed?

Please note: I am in no way saying that your Dad is at fault, I understand that he ran oversomething.

That looks like what can happen if you hit too many potholes around here.

That sucks. Whatever it was it had to be big that he hit.

How old was the tire?

Wicked Pilot wrote:How old was the tire?

2½ years, as old as the van. However, that particular model of tire is rated for 100,000km, and the van only has 46,000km on it. The treads on the other tires appear to be in good shape, and there is no uneven wear I can see. I also checked the pressure on each of the 3 remaining tires, and it's within the manufacturer's reccomended range...

If my memory is correct, wasn't one of the big issues during the whole Firestone/Ford thing that there were conflicts between the ratings of tire pressure between Ford's reccomendations and Firestone's?

Darth Bowser wrote:If my memory is correct, wasn't one of the big issues during the whole Firestone/Ford thing that there were conflicts between the ratings of tire pressure between Ford's reccomendations and Firestone's?

Yup. Firestone recommended an inflation pressure of 30psi for those truck tires while Ford was saying 26psi. Underinflated tires flex too much and overheat, and before you know it, they fail.