Have you ever seen a wheel come off on the road?

I can now say "I've seen this twice."

Saturday my wife and I were coming back from dumping brush at the landfill and police have one lane blocked off. I assume a wreck...well it was kinda that.

Guy pulling a trailer has lost a wheel and dragged his left rear hub (edit: I think it was a rotor) along the pavement for about 3 feet. Young man standing behind his truck looked a bit "dejected" as the officer stood by.

I saw this once before, 2004 or 2005, Independence Blvd between Charlotte and Mathews, NC. Pickup truck westbound lost his driver's side rear wheel, which was thrown straight up about 20 feet! Thing bounced around, thankfully missing other cars. Driver dragged his hub and pulled off into a parking lot.

***
I think what causes this is dissimilar metal corrosion. Guy thinks he has his lug nuts torqued correctly but no, that corrosion later breaks away, lug nuts loosen, and if the driver doesn't notice it, BOOM, loses a wheel.

What say the hive?

 

While traveling on I 71 south of Columbus OH behind a Waste Management garbage truck I kept seeing little light green pieces of garbage coming from the back of the truck. After a few miles of this needless littering a right side rear tire came off and broke through the fencing, then jumped the dirt berm landing on the roof of a car. The display of twinkling broken glass in the early morning sunshine was impressive.
I took the next exit and left my card with an explanation taped to the hood of the car. I would have put my business card on the windshield under the wiper blade but there was no glass left intact anywhere on the car.
Those pieces of green litter? Yeah, those safety lug nut indicators to tell the driver his nuts are loose.

 

Not me, but my cousin was going up the interstate one morning and saw a wheel go by. Just about the time he thinks "Hey, that looks like.." his front passenger side hit the ground. To add insult to injury, the wheel rolled into a pond. In February.

 

Had it happen to me when I was 16. Driving my brother in laws new F-150 and pulling a trailer with the bed and trailer loaded down with watermelons. Brother in law was ahead of me in another truck and something felt a little off. I decided if I caught back up to him I was going to say something, but nope.... Truck swerves to the left and I see the read driver side wheel go rolling past me. I managed the slow it down and pull to the right side of the road. I get out the truck hyperventilating and the guy behind me pulls over and says he closed his eyes because it looks like I was about to go down an embankment but managed to get it stopped.

Turns out my brother in law had a blow out on that tire a week prior and the guy that replaced the tire apparently hadn't torqued it down. Did almost $7K of damage to the truck and he sold it less than a year later. Left a nice gash in the road from the rotor dragging that was a reminder for a couple of years as I passed the spot. Had some guys pull over and tell me they could get me back on the road with some new wheel studs. I turned them down lol.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxZnJ7LhHiA

This one looks like it was probably due to stupidity. Guy is probably running thick spacers and offset wheels combined

 

I've seen it in the road and I've had it happen on the trail.
LBJ and tie rod failures suck!!

 

I've seen it a few times in my career over the last 40 years.....
Usually, it's tires or wheels coming off a semi-truck, sometimes a car...

Seen a few of these too.
IMHO, that was an improper driver pretrip, the tandom locks were not engaged properly..

https://youtu.be/GZ-B1jMBaHc?si=o79t_Fplgw8e6KWZ

 

I have had it happen twice - on the same vehicle. I had an old bronco years ago that should have gone to the scrap heap but was too cool to smash. Bought it from a buddy. Took it out in the hills on some dirt roads one day; on the way home driving 55 or 60 mph on the back roads, I got a sudden and wicked shake in the whole vehicle for about 3 seconds. I let off the gas and started to apply the brakes when it stopped as suddenly as it started, followed an abrupt crash and screech as the tire popped off, smashed through the rear fender, and the rear drum brake slammed in to the ground.

It send me in to a skid, careening sideways at 50 mph headed straight towards a telephone pole. I steered in to it and tried smashing the brakes, which spun be back the other direction into the opposite lane, headed toward a barbed wire fence. I again corrected and steered back the other way. I pumped the brakes and eventually got the truck stopped. I’d anybody knows anything about 70’s ford brakes, you know how heroic that feat was…

Once stopped, I looked out the window to see that tire bouncing down the road, veer off the side, ramp off of the ditch, clear the fence, and continue on into the middle of a field. Turned out 4 out of 5 of the wheel studs had sheared clean off. I’d had my drivers license all of a week or two. I may have needed a new pair of shorts. Luckily, I had been driving much longer than that (we could drive around 12 when I worked on a farm..) and had some experience getting sideways in the snow.

Second time was three or four years later in the same vehicle, coming home from work. First job out of high school. Wel, it was kind of the same vehicle… In those three or four years I had rebuilt the motor in my neighbors shop (400m with flat top pistons, a new cam, decked the heads, Edlebrock I take and 4 BBL for a torque monster), rebuilt the transmission in my parents garage, and swapped the entire drivetrain and interior over to a cleaner, straighter donor body after having a mishap with an icy dirt road corner getting sideways (on purpose this time) at 50 mph at 2 AM when I ran out of ice at full angle and and full noise, resulting in a abrupt run in with a ditch and a broken steering gear. It was cheaper to swap the entire drivetrain to a new body than try to get a new steering gear and linkage. The pitman arm sheared the steering shaft clean off the gear… but an other story for another time.

Anyways, I turned on to a road 1/2 mile from my house when I hit a pot hole right before a bridge over a canal while accelerating up to speed. The pothole felt particularly jarring for how small it was, then I realized that afte trh vehicle pitched up and down, it was still pitched down and making a horrible screeching racket. I poked my head out the window Ace-Ventura-style and was greeted with my front tire sitting completely outside the wheel well in a shower of sparks.

‘That’s interesting’ I thought to myself. ‘I prolly ought to get this rig pulled over.’ Calm and collected, having had experience in this sort of thing and having been surprised in no way by the tire falling off… again.. I stared to pull over. I had just barely cleared the bridge but the road was still slightly elevated and built up about three feet from the field below, so as I hit the brakes (also rebuilt and actually functional now) and pulled over to the side. The front axle plowed through the edge of the asphalt and in to the gravel road buildup, stopping me rather abruptly with most of the backend of the truck still sitting on the shoulder of the road.

I just watched as the tire continued on its trajectory on down the road. It made it about a 1/4 mile before the road crown directed it off to the side where it once again ramped off of the ditch embankment and launched itself into a field. Some kid my age in a sweet square body chevy stopped to see if I was ok and asked if he could help. I told him where the tire had landed and asked if he could retrieve it. He laughed and agree to help. By the time he brought it back, an officer had stopped to kindly figure out what in tarnation some dumb fool of kid had done. The other kid quietly dropped my tire in front my truck like a dead duck, took one bemused look at the officer, and cut out as I waved my thanks to him.

I explained to the officer that my front tire and I had become embroiled in a sudden and unexplained argument on the ride home, and that out of the blue it decided to leave me high and dry and venture off in to the world all by its lonesome. He couldn’t keep his cop poker face on and stated laughing. He radioed in a call to AAA for me, and we waited almost an hour for the tow truck to show up while every single person I knew drove by during rush hour traffic, gawking a laughing at my predicament. I just smiled and waved. It was pretty hilarious.

Tow truck showed up, loaded up my truck, and drove the 1000 feet to my driveway to unload. Best money the guy ever made.

Upon inspection, the officer opined that some neighborhood kids had loosened the lug nuts on my truck while I was at work. They had some reports of that happening in the neighborhood next to where I worked. So I wasn’t cited, just heckled and harassed for the next several months by my friends and neighbors.

 

Wow...I guess I'm not the only one to have seen this! Some wild adventures here.

On my 2002 Honda Accord, aluminum rims, I was having serious issues with the lug nuts coming loose. It was so bad after a tire rotation I'd have to wrench those down after driving a mile or two and do that a couple of times. I'd end up with lug nuts so tight I carried a 3 feet length of pipe as a cheater bar in case I needed to change a flat tire.

A mechanic doing a rather intense yearly car inspection on that Honda told me it was the dissimilar metal corrosion thing of the steel hub in contact with the aluminum wheel. He suggested cleaning off the corrosion on both pieces every tire rotation. I've since done that and BINGO, no more loose lug nuts.

I've found even doing it with a wire brush is enough. I think once an aluminum wheel is old enough and loses its clear coat, the aluminum is exposed and begins to corrode against the steel of the hub. (I even clean off steel rims and hubs).

 

Last year a bunch of us in rush hour had to slam brakes and dodge a tire going across all three lanes of traffic.
Dude still had his rim, as just the tire came off the rim.
Bad bead? It was those low profile tires on some little car.

 

Columbus Ohio again. Married a lady from Lancaster Co PA and relocated her to London Ohio. Every summer we'd drive east to get her folks and bring them to our home for a few weeks. Mother in Law seemed to hate everything about Ohio. On the trip taking them home MIL noticed a Nissan 4dr with a rear sway bar loose and let me know that would never happen in PA since they have vehicle inspections every year. I told her that we didn't need such nonsense in Ohio since our drivers took better care of their vehicles and the Nissan was probably on the way to the dealer to have the sway bar fixed. That shut her up for about 10 minutes until the right front wheel and tire took the Brice Rd exit with the Nissan continuing on I 70 east. She just scowled a snide grin all the way back to Ephrata.

 

I was towing a friends UTV home and he hadn't strapped down the spare tire, and I just happened to look behind me when we hit a dip for an overpass and saw that bad boy go orbital and shoot out of view.