Dashcam Captures Catastrophic Wheel Failure

Sat, Nov 19, 2016. 8:20am On the Westbound 407 ETR in Ontario Canada. Have the family in the Mini Cooper, heading to London, when we come up behind this SUV.

I notice from way back that the hazards are on, so I expect to see the skinny spare tire on it. As we pull up on the left to pass it, I notice the wheel wobble moments before some bits (lug nuts and bolts) fly off, I fixate on the bits, not sure if he just ran over some rocks or gravel and see them bouncing on the road. I follow the bits with my eyes and one slams into my car (seen in the slow-mo bit at the end)

My wife is watching the whole thing, as we pass him, the sparks are flying and we could hear the grinding. Then the wheel separates from the truck, and crosses all the lanes and bounces into the centre median. Luckily it stayed in there and rolled along for some time, and did not bounce over the barrier and into oncoming traffic (I followed it in my rear view as long as I could)

The guy certainly knew something was wrong with his truck, as he had his hazard lights flashing. He took a risk to continue driving in my opinion, as people have been killed in Ontario by fly-away wheels. He is just lucky that no one was hurt by that thing.

I have ran a dashcam for a number of years now, and just a couple of weeks ago put my motorbike away for the season so thought I would mount it's dashcam in my Mini Cooper as a rear facing cam. Good idea, I am going to get a dedicated rear facing dashcam for my car now, half the crazy crap that happens out there on the road happens behind you.

[DMotovlogs]

When your Ford gets tired of Exploring...

[Weapon.X.]

Clearly the moron driving knew something wrong with his car because he had his flashers on. He should've stoped and checked, at least nobody got hurt.

[jsmcguireIII]

lower ball joint failure and then tie rod, sway bar and CV axle separation. Good piece of driving.

[jasonbell]

I don't know what happened here without the facts, apart from the lug nuts or studs completely failed, but the owner said the snow tires were installed 2 weeks before. So this incident, if correct to assume the owner drove during the two weeks, took many miles before lug or stud failure to occur. This doesn't look like a bad wheel hub. Notice how the concrete median failed to contain the rogue wheel within those lanes?

I cringe every time I hear an impact wrench in an auto shop. They're great to loosen lugs. Bad for torquing.

When shops torque the lugs on with an impact wrench (IW) it violates the whole physics behind the clamp load of wheel stud. lug nut and rim. All components should be clean, each nut torqued to the manufacturer's lb.ft spec. in correct fastening order. Only a calibrated torque wrench can achieve this precision task.

All steel bolts stretch under enough torque. Even though wheel studs aren't 'stretch bolts', they do stretch at the manufacturer lb.ft. spec., usually 100 lb.ft. for most passenger vehicles. The Ford Expedition torque is provided by Ford and printed in the owner's manual. Every lug spec. achieves a clamp load of zero play without meeting or exceeding the steel's yield point. The yield point is the do-not-go-here point. If landed on or surpassed, the elasticity of the steel, and what enables clamp load, is ruined.

Over-powered auto shop IWs can easily meet or surpass yield point. When do, the studs are now useless.

Which is why I have a calibrated torque wrench, and avoid auto shops at all possible. Incredible tool for any car owner. Do not loan this to your brother-in-law or neighbour. They will stupidly use it to loosen lugs and break it, even if one warns ten times not to.

Once torqued, hearing the distinct 'click', the wheel's on good. Once a month or after any abnormal vibration, check the torque.

[patrickruddell]

Legend has it that tire is still rolling down the highway

[minicooperdashcam]

The police have talked to him apparently, and he had just had his winter tires installed, so the lug nuts or bolts were not torqued up properly, and/or were not inspected and re-torqued after driving for a few hours like your supposed to do. I read this update on 1010 talk radio news website, as they featured this video yesterday.

[wutupitblake]

Rumor has it the tires still rolling to this very day

[BeeeHonest]

Lucky the highway wasn't busy! Hope everyone is ok!

[calbassas]

It always completely pisses me off when drivers knowingly operate a vehicle with a shoddy tire system. Anything to do with the tires or steering of the vehicle should be brought in for repair as soon as it becomes known. Instead, people choose to put it off for months on end until this happens and people end up getting killed. They should be jailed.

[timetravelingoldman]

This is why you must always torque all of your wheels.

[themuffinman]

imagine seeing ur wheel roll across 4 lanes from ur window

[PhilBourgeois]

Just came from Canadian tire I bet
Good job boys!

[mygamingbros]

Ok so the reason he had his hazard lights on already was because the tire will shake for a while when driving at this point you can still drive under 50-60 safely, but above that is dangerous. Now right before the tire will come off the whole car will violently shake which is why he attempts to stop. Also the reason the bus instantly stops is because the tire is spinning at really high speeds and can cause some serious damage to the vehicle. And yes this had happened to me before but at 10:00pm with no one around

[kevinkorthuis]

I had this happen to me going 115km/h a couple years ago after some kids (I assume kids at least) had tried to take my wheel off. I had a security lug on but that only stopped them from removing 1 of the 5. I didn't notice any vibrations or anything before that last lug snapped off. Was a surreal experience for sure! luckily my dad lived close to where I lost the tire so he came and helped me get rolling again. I wish someone had my experience on camera, would have been interesting to see what it looked like.

[DoneTick]

This happened to my first car i had, a 1990 honda civic si. My gross rim flew into the lake. Good times.

[mistacdawg]

The wheel bearing/hub can fail and cause this too! Even with the lugnuts tight

[heroknaderi]

Wow Nice Capture. I hope their ok. this video shows the Worst case scenario if you don't replace a bad wheel Bearing.

[kashis]

why the hazards though.. obviously the person felt the car shaking or something

[sarahsmith]

I can tell from all the other Commons no one ever thought that the wheel bearing was bad clearly they knew something was going wrong because they had the hazards on

[krystalyvezcruz]

This happen to me and my boyfriend a few blocks from our home. Our ball join broke. We are lucky that we are not on expressways because according to our mechanic our wheels might fall off or overturned our car