Hot Rods Death due to tire

A guy was killed here in Kerrville on Sunday. He was driving by the airport and a front tire blew out and he lost control. It was a 32 roadster. He had no seatbelt and was thrown from the car. A friend drove by shortly after the wreck. He said the car must have been traveling as it took out a section of fence, and finally hit a pole. I know there is a thread on old tires now up but I think this deserves it's own thread.
Another friend thought he got a good deal on some big and littles with caps and rings. Come to find out two tires were 17 years old and the other two 12 .
I change my tires often. WalMart has some great little Volkswagon size tires for about $40 for those running that style. That is what I have on my roadster. Cheap insurance.

 

Could not wearing a seatbelt have been a factor in the fatality?

 

Running cheap tires most likely made in China purchased at WalMart can hardly be considered insurance.

 

Tires have codes which indicate where the tires were made. I have two vehicles with tires I purchased at Walmart. All eight of those tires were made in NORTH CAROLINA. Last time I checked, North Carolina was not in China. But hey, why miss a chance to take a shot at Walmart? We all know that all of the evil in the entire world is Walmart's fault.

 

Seatbelts are fundamental. It shouldn't take a degree in Physics for anyone to understand the forces involved. You aren't strong enough to stay inside a moving vehicle when inertia rules otherwise. All it takes is one thing (tires in this case) to go wrong. One good click is cheap insurance and starts to move the odds more toward your side of the table.

 

Well, the tire initiated the accident...speculation is speculation, but a seat belt would seem to be something that could very possibly have saved him.
1. If he had been strapped down behind the wheel, he probably still would have been blown off the road by sudden tire failure, but he might well have been able to miss the pole if he had been there to steer and brake.
2. Ejection has a very high fatality rate because you are still traveling at vehicular speeds with nothing around you.

Old tires are a VERY common problem for rodders and restorers...we buy them years before cars are finished, many times they get little mileage and wear to inspire replacement, AND we are often buying low production oddball tires whose manufacture and design may be questionable.
Our cars are generally light and so don't wear tires as quickly as heavy modern iron...one of the many things that should have killed me when I was a kid.
When I was in college, I ran my old '48 Ford from southerm Mississippi to Pennsylvania for college. The tires were ancient, and had been sitting for some years while we were in South America.
I had SEVEN flats on the trip, ending up with the old tires starting to shed big chunks of tread. 16's were not readily available at interstate gas stations, I had no money, and so had multiple patches on top of patches, a couple of new wrong-size 15" tubes stuffed into dying tires, etc. I barely made it back to base and both of my hands were covered with blisters from continual cranking the jack...
The tires had looked fine, with deep treads.
Since I was broke and broke down, I wrote my Father...he commented that the '48 could get 40,000 on tires with tread remaining, and generally did need new ones before the tread disappeared...wish he'd mentioned that before I found out myself! He bought me a nice new set...
In retrospect, I was damn lucky to have not splattered myself on a roadside pole.

 

Old tires were not much of a factor back in the day they only lasted 10,000 or 15,000 miles.

 

That's terrible. Nice long straight piece of road there. I lived in Center Point for 12 years. It wasn't one of the Boerne Stage Road guys, was it?

 

Unfortunately, inspecting tires is one thing that doesn't happen often enough by, I suspect, most of us, myself included. Hopefully this results in many of the HAMBers taking a long hard look attheir tires and replace questionable ones before a problem occurs.

 

And remember that tires dying of old age often look pretty good, and we are conditioned to mostly care about remaing tread.

 

I don't know. I have not been too active for a while. All my stuff stays broke.

 

Well Guys, to me it sounds like we are ***uming he had Old tires and that he was not in the car to steer it causing the impact with the fence and Pole. It could have been he was watching an Airplane take off and verred into the fence causing the tire to blow then while hanging onto the steering wheel impacted the Pole causing him to be ejected on impact. Personally I'm going to stop driving past Airports, they distract the Hell out of me and Nobody is watching the road.
I'm not making light of the Fact some one lost there Life, just pointing out that based on the above information We do not really know exactly what caused the accident that took his life. Life really is a very Fragile thing. Sorry for the loss.
The Wizzard

 

Must have missed that on the news.Sad to hear.

 

The newspaper article said the tire blew. Speed limit there is 55 I believe. The road is in excellent shape. I jumped to conclusion.
I am just theorizing and hope people check their tires.

 

Seat belts? Subjective, I wear them everytime I get in a car, ANY car, BUT, when I was 16, that would be 44 years ago, I was ejected from my car during a head on with a kenworth, I was too dumb to wear belts, but it saved my life, all I got was a scratch on my arm, its been a great 44 years since then. Fact is the driver is the only guy who knows what happened, sorry for his and his family's loss, it happens.

 

A lot of guys just are not concerned about the age of tires, but you have to wonder why the manufactures must by LAW PUT ON A DATE CODE. The thought is after 6 years they start to deteriorate. I have seen new looking tires that are date coded 15 years ago sell like hot cakes at Swap Meets to Old Time Hot Rodders.
l

 

Read an article in the paper this morning about a guy and son, who are suing the dealership that sold them an SUV, the Continental Tire Company, and a service center, all for an accident that killed his pregnant wife. The were NINE people in this SUV when a rear tire blew out causing a rollover accident. Only one tire was a Continental, the rest were Goodyear. The dealership put the non-matching tire on the SUV. That tire was over 10 years old! I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

wow, very tough for his family and friends. sorry for their loss. I agree that many of us do not check the condition of tires, brakes, suspension of our rides often enough. spend more time polishing stuff, etc. just jump in the reliable ride and go. have had a fairly new/ low miles Goodyear front tire collapse inside because of radial separation. ya never know. oh ya, did have a new retread tire (remember those?) lose tread. I am one of those wear a seat belt is a good thing types.

 

Keep drinking the kool-aid Wizzard.
I'm sorry to hear the dude didn't get a chance to learn the lesson.
I've been in car accidents with seat belt on and also with no seat belt. Seat belts are a very good thing, a high percentage of the time. I'm one of the lucky ones that got tossed out, but survived. I actually got my feet caught in the p***enger seat belt and got dragged. (how is that for irony)
Tires is one of the problems I see in the traditional scene. Lots of stuff I see/hear of being run, that I wouldn't put on a lawn cart.

 

In my OT rides with the mileage I pile on them, if tires go 4 years that's a lot. Most of my older rides used bias-ply tires, which don't last as long as radials did for me. Still I bought all new radials for my Ford and will be keeping the labels off them so I'll know when I got them. If I have it that long.

The yearly NY state inspection is a good thing, it gives an extra pair of eyes on the car as long as they just don't slap a sticker on it and call it done.

 

I have 6 year old tires with 4,000 miles on them- look perfect- should I replace-

 

Sad to see that. It hits all of us when we loose one from the rodder community in an accident in his hot rod.
Seat belts: All I'm going to say on that one is that we seem to have about three fatal accidents within a 50 mile radius of where I sit now a month where someone was thrown out of a vehicle because they weren't wearing a seat belt. For some reason those are usually attractive 30 something women driving a full size SUV that most of the time you could roll back on it's wheels and . checking the fluids drive away Staying strapped down in a car seat even one in a roadster usually means that you stand a lot better chance of regaining control of the vehicle than when you are bouncing around on the seat with only a death grip on the wheel to hold you in place.

Having spent a big number of my working years working directly with tires or around them I'd have to say that any tire can fail and new or nearly new tires that have been compromised can fail. That could mean too small of a tire on too wide of a rim, hitting a curb, pothole or chunk of something in the middle of the road. I ran over a piece of s**** metal in the middle of the freeway and blew a two day old tire on my ot rig last year. Tire failure or blowing doesn't necessarily mean the tire was several years old. I would like to see more info on what caused his tire to blow though as it may help prevent another accident in the future.

 

One of the most important DOT codes on a vehicle tire is when it was manufactured.
The NHTSA has no set guidelines for "tire aging", thus leaving it up to tire manufactures.
From what I have read in the past, it's not necessarily the miles you drive but the age of the tire.
The recommendations to replace tires vary depending on which tire manufacture, anywhere from 5-10 years.
That's pretty broad. I checked mine when I bought my 1950 Ford Custom in 2011.
The manufacture date was 0808---Week 8 and the Year 2008.
Being it's 2015, my tires are 7 years old, but they look brand new.
I'm just getting my car back on the road again and will be replacing all 4 tires.
I'm not a tire expert by any means, it's just my choice, better safe than sorry.
Also my condolences to the family of this tragedy.

 

I know more people that were saved by being thrown clear than saved by their seat belt. One was thrown through the convertible top and watched his car go end over end nine times. What was left looked like it had been through the crusher. Another was thrown clear when he hit a wall head on at a high rate of speed. There wasn't anything left of that truck either. I wear mine in my Jeep because it bounces and you can lose control. In my pictured Olds I don't have them or want them.

 

Your data set is too small to have any extrapolative statistical relavence.

The actual data set reveals a pattern which negates your observations, and proves that they are fundamentally, and indisputably the opposite of the truth.

 

Yeah, I knew a guy that got thrown out of a car and then killed when it rolled over him. The other guy (who remained in the car) survived with only minor injuries...

 

captaintaytay - In my opinion that would be a wise move for you and your family, Good Luck.

 

I just tried to find more info on this crash, but all the local newspapers demand a subscription to view their online content. What I did learn was 64 yr old Mr Hayes crashed his '29 Ford after a front tire blew on Sunday afternoon on Tx Hwy 27.

 

Me too, man. My brother-in-law was killed like that. His wife survived the acccident with just a broken arm. In another case, there was this very pretty girl I went to high school with. She was in a rollover accident and was thrown from the car. The car rolled over her. She has spent the last three and a half decades in a wheel chair.

The are cases where people survived only because the weren't wearing seat belts but statistics show the odds are with the seatbelt wearers.

 

Depends on the situation, a seat belt can kill you or save you in a roadster, if you turtle it and are tied in unless you have a roll bar you are likely to get squished by the car.

I hate to hear about any fatality and while it seems like a good time to discuss the reasons for the death the fact remains that the death and respect for the deceased is reason enough to leave it for some other time.

I don't know the man but I do hope that he rests in piece.