So my sister and Niece were in a crash yesterday with her bosses car. Let me first say they're both 100% ok. The airbags didn't even deploy, and to paraphrase a GM SRS engineer that I spoke to way back at probably the first Merchant 'Spring Fling', where I asked him about a 'significant' crash I responded to where the airbags in a GMT800 truck pulling a 5th wheel didn't deploy, 'were they needed?'.
That being said, I'm very curious as to what may have caused it and am curious as to what people here may come up with.
So what happened is a tire let go and put the car into the left wall. Initially, my suspicion was someone driving it before her smoked a pothole with the front left tire and it had sidewall impact damage that decided to give up at that time. Steer tire failures USUALLY have the highest likelihood of loss of control. Turns out it was actually the right rear, and additionally, someone that stopped to make sure they were ok said it had been smoking for 'several miles'. That kind of info takes my brain in a different direction. IF the tire had been low enough on air to get hot enough to smoke (if that's even possible), there would have been a warning on the dash about tire pressure. So that takes me to thinking either wheel bearing or brake. She did mention something felt 'odd' for 'a bit' leading up to it, but she couldn't put her finger on it. So from there, my first thoughts are either the bearing failed and locked up or the brake had some sort of failure and ended up locking the wheel up, either way, dragging the tire until it reached the failure point. If that happened, the tire would show obvious evidence of it. That could be what happened, but the pictures I saw were inconclusive (if that had actually happened, that patch could have been under the wheel where the picture didn't show). Another thought would be could the bearing or brake generate enough heat in the failure to transmit it to the wheel and heat the tire up enough to cause it to fail? The report of smoke for 'several miles' does suggest quite a bit of heat (or a locked up wheel dragging the tire along). Although if something was generating massive amounts of heat to be transmitted into the wheel, I'd expect he OUTER portion of the tire to be affected first....
Given that this was a situation where no one was hurt or worse, and the only real damage is to the car (I'm told it put her into a guardrail, not a cable barrier) I kind of doubt that much effort will be put into determining the cause of the crash. The tin can is for sure a write off and insurance will likely end up closing the case, writing a check or two and calling it a day.
What do our armchair quarterbacks at DuramaxDiesels think? No legal ramifications here, and her boss seems to be a really good guy and seems to have been more concerned with the fact that it was his car and they could have been hurt.
That being said, I'm very curious as to what may have caused it and am curious as to what people here may come up with.
So what happened is a tire let go and put the car into the left wall. Initially, my suspicion was someone driving it before her smoked a pothole with the front left tire and it had sidewall impact damage that decided to give up at that time. Steer tire failures USUALLY have the highest likelihood of loss of control. Turns out it was actually the right rear, and additionally, someone that stopped to make sure they were ok said it had been smoking for 'several miles'. That kind of info takes my brain in a different direction. IF the tire had been low enough on air to get hot enough to smoke (if that's even possible), there would have been a warning on the dash about tire pressure. So that takes me to thinking either wheel bearing or brake. She did mention something felt 'odd' for 'a bit' leading up to it, but she couldn't put her finger on it. So from there, my first thoughts are either the bearing failed and locked up or the brake had some sort of failure and ended up locking the wheel up, either way, dragging the tire until it reached the failure point. If that happened, the tire would show obvious evidence of it. That could be what happened, but the pictures I saw were inconclusive (if that had actually happened, that patch could have been under the wheel where the picture didn't show). Another thought would be could the bearing or brake generate enough heat in the failure to transmit it to the wheel and heat the tire up enough to cause it to fail? The report of smoke for 'several miles' does suggest quite a bit of heat (or a locked up wheel dragging the tire along). Although if something was generating massive amounts of heat to be transmitted into the wheel, I'd expect he OUTER portion of the tire to be affected first....
Given that this was a situation where no one was hurt or worse, and the only real damage is to the car (I'm told it put her into a guardrail, not a cable barrier) I kind of doubt that much effort will be put into determining the cause of the crash. The tin can is for sure a write off and insurance will likely end up closing the case, writing a check or two and calling it a day.
What do our armchair quarterbacks at DuramaxDiesels think? No legal ramifications here, and her boss seems to be a really good guy and seems to have been more concerned with the fact that it was his car and they could have been hurt.
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