Truck Tyres: Bigga Badda Boom

On Saturday, my Eldest and I went cycling. It was shopping trip for some of his essential supplies. In any case, part of our journey requires us to travel through an area that’s in the process of being developed. There’s a lot of construction going on and that means there’s oodles of heavy equipment in use, including tonnes of trucks. This one had one of its truck tyres go boom.

While most of the truck drivers go out of their way to look out for pedestrians and cyclists, travelling through the area can still be quite scary sometimes, especially crossing the roads. There are far too many blind corners. Near where the photo was taken there’s a particularly bad road that is hidden by lots of plants, as well as being at the top of a rise. A lot of trucks use this side road to turn onto a major arterial road. That means the drivers aren’t always looking out for anything other than the other trucks around them.

In any case, the truck in the photo was stuck on one of the lanes of the highway. It was going nowhere. It had obviously been turning when the tyre blew. The wheel had been destroyed, there was debris all across the road, and groove marks in the pavement. Messy. It was still there when we returned about an hour later.

I immediately thought of a video I had seen (IIRC on Reddit) that showed a man intent upon shitbaggery by puncturing a truck’s tyre with a screwdriver (or knife, I forget which). Piercing the tyre caused it to explode. Let’s just say, there wasn’t much left of the shitbag afterwards. Truck tyres are under very high pressure, and so when that’s released bad things happen.

I warned my Eldest about the dangers. Not because he’s the sort of kid that would become a shitbag, but he might save the life of a kid that has.

I hope he never needs to heed that warning.