From jsonline.com:
The Mequon physician who was killed Thursday night by a wheel that came off a heavy truck is at least the seventh person to die in such an accident this year on the country's highways. Three of the seven victims have been from Wisconsin. ...
The latest victim is Krishna Chintamaneni, chief of staff at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-St. Francis. Chintamaneni, 55, was driving home on I-43 near Silver Spring Drive in Glendale when a tire flew off a southbound truck, bounced over a wall and hit Chintamaneni's windshield. He died at the scene. ...
In terms of overall truck accidents, wheel separations are rare. A 1992 study by the National Transportation Safety Board estimated there were 750 to 1,050 a year, out of 349,000 truck accidents annually at the time.
But that amounts to roughly two to three a day, and the incidents were troubling enough in Ontario in the 1990s that the province passed a law imposing strict penalties on truck owners when wheels come off. ...
Heavy-truck wheels weigh 200 to 300 pounds, and when they spin off at highway speed, their velocity typically keeps them stable and rolling even when they hit a median, Woodrooffe said. That makes the likelihood of hitting a vehicle "fairly significant," he said.
And if the wheel crosses the median, "not only do you have to worry about the velocity of the tire, you also have to worry about the velocity of the vehicle coming in the other direction, so the energy of the collision is very, very high," he said.
any updates to this post?
Posted by: Tim Morrison | 08/08/2011 at 12:01 PM