If you’re a fan of weird films, you’ve probably heard of Rubber, Quentin Dupieux’s tale of a rampaging tire. It turns out that it’s not too far from a reality of our roadways. Loose wheels have been known to cause serious, shocking crashes on roadways worldwide, and a recent loose wheel incident in Chatsworth, Calif. was picked up by Twitter user Anoop Khatra on his Tesla’s forward-facing camera. Take a look:
Witnessed and recorded the most INSANE car crash yesterday, you can see Autopilot also swerve and avoid the rouge tire for me $TSLA pic.twitter.com/csMh2nbRNX
— Anoop (@Anoop_Khatra) March 25, 2023
In the video, the left front wheel of a GMT900 Chevrolet Silverado makes a break for it in front of a second-generation Kia Soul at point-blank range, leaving the Soul driver with very little time to react. Unsurprisingly, it’s a direct hit. All the energy stored up in that loose wheel and tire launches the poor Kia Soul into the air like a Hollywood nitrogen cannon [Ed note: Actually, what happened is the tire acted like a sort-of “ramp,” with the tread grabbing the front bumper, and the vehicle just rolling right over it. -DT]. The Soul then rotates mid-air before slamming roof-first into the roadway. The hit is hard enough to flip the Soul back onto its wheels before skidding down the highway for a reasonable distance. Adding insult to injury, once the Soul has nearly stopped moving, the tire comes back to hit it on the tailgate.
Despite the sheer amount of destruction, the California Highway Patrol told local news channel ABC 7 that the driver of the Kia suffered only minor injuries. Without modern crash structures and restraint systems, this could’ve been a lot worse.
As for cause, CHP claims that the wheel of the truck came loose due to “sheared-off lug nuts,” so let’s touch on what can lead to shearing wheel studs. While it’s possible that inferior quality wheel spacers placed lateral force on the lug nuts, over-stressing the studs, the more likely culprit is improper torqueing of lug nuts. As with any fastener combination, wheel fastening hardware can deform if excessive torque is applied. Over-torque a wheel bolt or a lug and stud combination enough times and it can fail. Likewise, if wheel fastening hardware is under-torqued, a wheel can apply significant shear force to individual fasteners, causing failure.
In addition, aftermarket wheels may be incompatible with factory wheel fasteners due to their lug seat styles and the thickness of their back pads. A washer-seat or ball-seat lug nut won’t be compatible with wheels that use conical seats. Too thick of a back pad, and wheel fasteners may not meet the proper minimum turns of engagement. Oh, and it’s a good idea to pick up hub-centric rings that adapt the center bore of aftermarket wheels down to the bore of your factory hubs. While these often plastic pieces don’t add much in the way of strength, they can help prevent improper wheel installation by centering wheels on the hubs.
If you look around on Amazon or at Harbor Freight, torque wrenches decent enough for roadside wheel and tire use are dirt cheap, so there’s no excuse not to spend a few bucks on one to keep in your trunk. Likewise, when re-installing a wheel and tire, it’s good practice to torque the fasteners to spec, drive around the block once or twice, re-torque, then re-torque again after 50 miles of driving to correct any further settling. Remember, torque your nuts, or road safety enforcement will torque your other nuts.
Update (March 28, 2023 3PM ET):
The California Highway Patrol has filed an official collision report. Here’s some key information from it:
On 03/23/2023, at approximately 02:05 P.M., officers assigned to the CHP West Valley area received a report of a rollover traffic collision across the eastbound lanes of SR-118, west of De Soto Ave. Preliminary investigation suggests a silver 2011 Chevrolet Silverado was traveling in the #2 lane of eastbound SR-118, west of De Soto Ave. A black 2017 Kia Soul was traveling in the #1 lane of eastbound SR-118, to the left-rear of the Chevrolet.
[…]
A red 2019 Tesla Model 3 was traveling in the #1 lane of the eastbound SR-118, directly behind the Kia. For unknown reasons, the front-left tire and rim detached from the Chevrolet and traveled directly into the path of the Kia, colliding with the front of the Kia and causing it to overturn. When the Kia overturned, it threw up debris that struck the front-end of the Tesla. The Chevrolet drove to the right shoulder and waited for CHP to arrive. The driver of the Kia was able to exit her vehicle and declined to be transported to the hospital. The driver of the Tesla waited for CHP to arrive and provided video of the collision to CHP officers on scene. No other injuries were claimed and the Kia had no other passengers.
The public relations offer did say that the CHP’s initial assessment had to do with some kind of lugnut failure. “Usually the officer will look and see why it fell off,” the representative told me over the phone, indicating that it’s fairly standard to get the responding officer’s assessment of what might have been the issue.
It’s worth noting that a number of folks have pointed out that the rotor appears to still be attached to the wheel via the lug studs, indicating either a bearing failure or detachment of the entire hub assembly from the knuckle. Oddly, the rotor in the screengrab appears to be perfectly round despite having to somehow squeeze its way past the brake-knuckle-mounted brake caliper; I see no caliper in the screengrab, either, though I suppose perhaps it could have flown off after shearing its mounting provisions for the knuckle. This shiny disc could be the back of a failed wheel spacer, though in this video, it looks a bit large. In any case, right now the root cause remains unclear, and we don’t have much to go on. -DT
(Photo credits: Anoop Khatra, jkirkhart35 licensed under CC BY 2.0, Gorilla Automotive Products)
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Why does “Drive My Car” off of the Beatles Rubber Soul album keep running through my head?
The rubber indeed met the Soul.
The left rear wheel also went askew after the front came off and not from any contact with the loose front wheel. Just the extra toe-in force from the front left dropping caused the rear hub to snap too. The spacers must have been a recent mod which were obviously installed incorrectly. I believe the brake disc came off with the wheel, so the hub studs clearly failed. Just how much torque were on those lugs?! Bro-dozing strikes again.
Also, if you install spacers which make your vehicle wider than 80 inches, are clearance lights required? Just how wide is a Silverado 1500?
Where do you see that a rear hub broke? I don’t see any such thing. Once the front left hit the ground the left rear suspension had to drop as well, but as the track veers to the right it sure looks like both rear wheels/hubs/axles are intact and rolling fine. This truck has a solid rear axle so the hub is actually part of the whole axle shaft.
Immediately upon the front left dropping, the left rear wheel toes in about 30 degrees. Pause the video at 17 or so seconds and it’s obvious. The axle flange came partly off the axle.
I don’t buy that for a second. If the rear axle flange “came partly off” you would see the rear wheel wobbling like mad. Instead it’s rolling straight. The rear axle toes in because the rear rear leaf spring has to compress a bunch in order to compensate for the sudden drop of the front left. As a former mechanic I’ve had to drag trucks with missing wheels on one corner with a floor jack and when the front corner of the truck is nearly on the ground the rear axle is skewed on the leaf springs and doesn’t sit straight.
Pause at around 18 seconds and explain the different angles of the rear wheels. You can actually see it shift at around 15 seconds. And hell yes a flange can bend or partially come off and the wheel still turns straight. The bearings are usually part of the flange assembly. Sure, the axle shaft would have to snap to not have wobble, but that could easily happen in these circumstances.
BTW, how does a live axle skew on the leaf springs? Please explain that one to me.It’s my understanding that there’s an alignment pin on leaf springs to stop exactly that from happening. A mechanic who can drag trucks with a floor jack should surely know that.
I honestly suspect that no matter what the video shows, you will not agree because you have made up your mind and now it’s become an ego thing so I will stop trying to convince you.
I paused at 18 seconds and still don’t see what you do. Both rear wheels appear to be parallel to each other. Of course the entire rear axle tweaked to one side due to the left side leaf springs compressor from the front corner dropping about a foot, but that’s not the same as the hub failing. The leaf spring compresses and the leaf shackle moves which effectively pushes the axle back on the one side.
Pause at 28 seconds and you can without a doubt see the brake rotor still attached to the front wheel. That is simply 100% impossible if the wheel studs either in the original front wheel hub bearing assembly or in aftermarket spacers failed. The brake rotor is sandwiched between the wheel (or spacer) and wheel hub flange, so the only way the brake rotor could stay attached to the wheel is if the wheel studs were intact. So if the rear hub broke as you are claiming due to wheel spacers, it’s a completely different failure than the front and a big coincidence. In other words, highly unlikely.
This isn’t an ego thing, I’m genuinely curious to know what happened here and am happy to be proven wrong, but I am also armed with a lot of info and experience. I work in the automotive suspension world and prior to that I worked for an internet auto parts retailer and personally handled thousands of orders for GMT900 front wheel hub bearings. So I know how suspension/driveline works (which is how I can tell you it’s impossible to have sheared wheel studs if the brake rotor is attached) AND know that the front hub bearing is a common failure point.
Man, I wish we had more info, just to satisfy our curiosity.
If the factory hub studs were tightened enough, they could totally break off and the rotor could still be attached. I think we can agree the rotor was attached.
My issue with the bearing failure idea is that bearings smoke or make horrible noises before they snap. I saw no smoke before this wheel came off, which leads me to conclude it was the studs. This appeared to be an instant failure. Furthermore, aren’t the bearings held in by three flange bolts to the hub? If the bearing failed, those three bolts have to also fail, unless a bad bearing machined away the inside of that flange, the wheel shouldn’t come off. Such machining would surely be obvious by noise and smoke before releasing the wheel. I really think the available evidence, combined the with police statement points to studs snapping.
I do concede leaf spring shackles can allow some shifting, but doesn’t the 1500 use a single shackle? Also, if the axle were that loosey goosey, wouldn’t any good one-sided front wheel bump send the truck off in the opposite direction? I still see the left rear wheel askew. 🙂
As one who has driven next to plenty of lifted trucks with noisy mud terrain tires that drown out my throaty V8, I’m sure it’s very possible that the bearing had been roaring its head off for miles and the driver simply didn’t hear it.
When these hubs fail, the two halves separate. The flange where the brake rotors touch is one half, whereas the portion that attaches to the knuckle is the other half. Here’s an example I found with a few seconds of Googling:
https://www.silveradosierra.com/threads/broken-hub-assembly.399738/
Anyway, this is all speculation, I’m just putting on my CSI hat because I’m a weirdo who actually likes reading failure analyses, and I truly have no problem with being proven wrong 🙂
Required by who? Who’s the regulating body thats going to say you need to run those lights?
NHTSA | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Sure but NHTSA doesn’t enforce laws on an individual vehicle owner basis.
And today’s Pedant Winner is…
Oh I win that every day 🙂
And today’s Touche Winner is… 🙂
Yet another case that would be solved with factory standard plows
Watching this video slowly I’m pretty sure you can see the brake rotor attached to the wheel as it rolls along which means the wheel studs would not be at fault, whether it be due to bad spacers, wrong nuts, etc. Ironically it was this kind of failure that I was hoping the recent article here about wheel spacers would address, but didn’t, because that article was really more about changing track width than using wheel spacers.
This era of GM truck has a pretty high failure rate on the front hub bearing assemblies. My money is on this being a bearing failure.
And having the tire centre wayyyy outboard with offset and/or spacers dramatically increases bearing loads
Yep. If what I said here is true then you can point to wheel spacers and/or wheels with aggressive backspacing causing the hub bearing to fail prematurely, but that is not the same thing as saying the wheel studs, which themselves are part of the hub bearing assembly, have failed.
More disturbed the Silverado driver kept heading for the left lane as the wheel visibly loosened, and there was no noticable slowing or heading for the shoulder by the driver until it was off. Also this was not ‘tread’.
Huh? The Silverado had completed the lane change and was going straight completely in its lane when the wheel fell off, and within 1 second of the wheel falling off it was veering to the right to go to the shoulder. Not sure what the Silverado driver could have done differently here.
I’m guessing this guy doesn’t realize that you can’t just slam on the brakes when the car is imbalanced on three wheels.
Huh again? He clearly didn’t just slam on the brakes by virtue of the fact that the truck didn’t immediately veer to the left when the wheel departed, and that it took a fair distance for him to come to a stop on the right side.
Props to the driver for not letting the truck immediately shoot to the left. I doubt I could do any better if the front left corner of my truck unexpectedly collapsed at 75 MPH.
We need a physics explanation of how a truck tire + wheel-weighing 100 lbs tops(and probably not even that), causes a 3000 lb +/- car to take a flight like a failed Evel Knievel stunt. Did the impact of the car deform it enough to start rolling under the bumper thus popping it up? Truly wild, I never want to drive on the freeway in an old car again, if that happened in my ’80s BMW I’d probably be dead.
Thank god the driver was okay. Because it makes me feel less guilty for laughing at the fact that the friggin’ tire came back and smacked the car again. Did that Soul owner spit on a gypsy woman while kicking a black cat under a ladder or something?
I showed the video to my kid a Kia Soul driver since 2015. She said she was impressed with how the Kia held up. She loves her car and has had only a gas cap go bad in 8 years.
Or, as most folks do, myself included, take your car to a tire shop or even Walmart. Then you pray the kid with the power torque gun doesn’t go nuts. And assuming not, will hopefully double check with a real torque wrench.
Good idea, because if they ugga dugga the wheel lugs to 150pounds, a torque wrench set to 40pounds will tell them!
well as a guy that has to Gage R&R torque wrenches as well as the Seekonk that we use to check employees units, I can say the HoBo Freight units almost never pass.
I can also tell you that even with exactly proper torque the clamping force of most fasteners degrades 5-10 percent each time torque is removed and re-applied. so add in those massively incorrectly offset tire with either overtorquing or even proper torque but multiple times and the recipe is potentially disastrous, as we see here.
I enjoy comparing this coverage to Jalopnik’s. Over there: “It happened!” Over here: “It happened! Here’s a link to a news article verifying that the driver walked away. And here’s how this could have happened.”
one more reason why the tankification of cars is stupid
Umm, without the safety standards that have resulted in the “tankification” of cars, this video would be a snuff film. It’s one more reason people bitching about cars being too heavy are stupid.
As a commenter on Jalopnik once said …
“You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel”
I’ve seen Rubber, this short clip of a soul going to heaven is way better. Great premise, terrible execution.
Sometimes I miss the big, airy, open greenhouses of like an old Wagoneer, and sometimes a car flies into the air and lands on its roof and the driver only sustains minor injuries.
Misleading. The embedded tweet mentions a “rouge” tire, but none of the tires in the video appear to be wearing any makeup at all.
One of the best (and only good) things about the old school World of Warcraft forums was people constantly complaining about “rouges”
But, maybe they were polished?
With black rouge? I used white rouge to polish piano keys. Too lazy to check etymology
‘All the energy stored up in that loose wheel and tire launches the poor Kia Soul into the air like a Hollywood nitrogen cannon.’
The energy came from the Soul moving at highway speed, not from the truck tire. The tire simply acted as a ramp to deflect the Soul towards heaven.
The tire rolling in, smacking the crushed Soul on the ass and collapsing by its side was the pièce de résistance.
Yup, complete misunderstanding of the physics in that portion.
Either that or Thomas has unmentioned information that the truck wheel contained an automatic reinflator with about 15000PSI in it that was triggered when the Kia squished the tire.
The worse analysis is the Twitter commenter who uses this as evidence that cars should be even heavier
This Tesla douchebro really had to add “you can see Autopilot also swerve and avoid the rouge tire for me $TSLA”.
He’s not gonna be your friend, Anoop.
Also, the “swerve” was more of a slight shift to the right than anything dramatic like he implies. And the wheel was out of the lane before it even reached the Tesla’s front bumper so it the shift wasn’t even necessary to avoid it…
But yeah, let’s make the story here about your Tesla, dude.
Which any semi-competent driver could have done, but Tesla stans love to demonstrate their ineptitude in order to lay compliments at the feet of Musk’s enabling system.
Ah come on, it’s still neat that a program did it. I agree that attempting to make the post about Tesla Autopilot is silly, but it’s still cool. If someone showed you that video a decade ago without all the modern context of Elon and Tesla Bros, you’d think it was pretty sweet
Some other people would, but definitely not me. I find the whole thing repellant, but I’ll save everyone a rant on that.
Wait…how many semi-competent drivers would be watching their driver’s side mirror for the tire to return?
I would have been watching the accident and checking my rear-view mirror to make sure someone wasn’t going to hit me while this was underway. There’s zero chance I would be looking out my driver’s side waiting for that tire to come back.
Also the tire looks black to me, poor dude is colorblind.
It was such an easy swerve at that speed & distance, too. Feels like the Tesla douchebro told on himself there as such a crappy driver that he needed Autopilot to avoid something any competent driver could have handled.
Making it sound as though he had a Cobb shifter or something.
Saw this on the Drive, watching the video and reading comments there, you can see the rotor still attached the wheel when it goes in for the second impact. Pretty sure the lug nuts are still intact with that in mind.
You sure that’s the rotor? It looks like it might be the clean portion of the wheel that had been covered by the hub. I’d expect the rotor to stick out more. Hard to tell on my screen though.
Agree, I think it’s the inner face of the wheel, not the rotor. The wheel has a super low offset which is why the wheels poke out – it’s the brodozeer look.
I’ve watched this full screen 5x and at the as the tire rolls past the camera vehicle it clearly looks like a brake rotor to me. The inner lip of the wheel is shiny but you can very clearly see a round shiny portion further inside that I would bet is a rotor.
Definitely the rotor.
It certainly does look like the rotor is still on the wheel, though if it is, I am surprised it departed the caliper without significant damage.
If the lugs snapped, the caliper would still be attached to the hub and the disk would just slide out. I firmly believe the installer just torqued the spacers down to the point of failure.
It might be the rotor, but it might be a shitty wheel spacer. Kinda hard to tell.
One second that Kia was on the road, the next poof – it’s up in the air. If you want to find it, you really have to do some Soul searching.
Cheapass looking brodozer wheels with lowprofile “offroad” looking tires
Looking at the tire poke on that bro truck I am betting on shitty spacers being the cause here.
Or more likely shitty fasteners holding said spacers on. always replace Jungle website fasters for the various parts with Known Grade 8 or even case hardened grade 5 ish fasteners when you can.
Liked for “Jungle website”!
Agreed.
That truck doesn’t have much poke.
Jason Camissa posted that on IG this morning. Absolutely terrifying. Glad to hear the driver wasn’t seriously injured. My daughter was convinced it had to be fake.
“Remember, torque your nuts” <- Most autopian bit of advice ever given.
A friend of mine told me he did that once. Said it hurt like nothing he’d felt before until he un-torqued it.
Can verify. Hurts like hell.
Rouge tire? I’ve heard of La Lumiere Rouge, San Fernando Valley’s 7th Best Taillight Bar (I have the shirt to prove it), but they’re now getting into tire sales?