Quote:
Originally Posted by Ram Jet
A few years back I was traveling East on Route 80 in New Jersey in an itty biity Nissan Sentra. I was in the middle of the three lanes. A tractor trailer traveling in front of me about 10-12 car lengths tossed the tread off of one of his recapped tires. The tire carcass was airborne at about 25-30 feet in the air and appeared to be headed right for my windshield. My right hand lane was open and I moved into it. Fortunately the tire carcass hit the guardrail on the left side of the fast lane. It was only a close call but could have been a disaster. Things could have been different. It probably would have killed me on my bike.
Bill
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Awesome luck you had there. Projectile debris, isn't something to be messing around with if it can be avoided. Kinetic energy is a killer... literally! Take any given mass and speed it up enough and it can equal the power of a nuclear device. On the flip side of that is what us bikers have to worry about often enough every day, aka for a given mass, a velocity coming to a very dramatic reduction. That is going from 100mph to 0mph in an instant. Or in layman's terms, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. I believe there is a Mythbusters episode (linked here somewhere iirc) that shows a tire tread impact to a human. I also remember seeing a piece of debris hitting a track rider and knocking him out cold, causing a down. It's worthy of your time to watch either as a possible preventative action on your part. As riders, one of our main goals while riding is to have "plan b or an escape route on tap." Now we just need the reaction and speed of Superman to avoid such things. lol
Good luck out there, glad you got some new plastics and stay safe as possible.