This could save your life. (1 Viewer)

[Snowbird]

Its every motorhomers worse nightmare. A steer axle blowout. This is what you should do, but how many know it, and how many would have the balls to do it should it happen to you.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I7vkiHi2I8"]Watch this! #1 reason why speed limiters kill... - YouTube[/ame]

 

[RS_rob]

Been there done it
Just another day on the job

Seriously I stopped watchiing @ 3.55 to the average driver in the average car that info is pretty useless as most cars are front wheel drive & the correct technique here is to maintain speed neither accelerating or braking & gently steer of the road into a layby.

Never Hit the brake period.

 

[OddSocks]

Well I think this was a brilliant post. We are not all died in the wool driving experts, some of us are newbies. I for one had no idea that this was the correct technique for dealing with a blow out in a van. And as I just purchased a big old van I think watching this video has been invaluable to me. So thanks for that, very interesting and very good to have learned something today! :thumb:

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[dippingatoe]

Thanks - useful to me also. I would just have braked, will try to remember if it ever happens to me.

 

[Snowbird]

Having held a HGV licence for over 40 years and driven trucks on several of the worlds continents, I do consider myself a fairly proficient driver, BUT, not all know what I know, and if that little video saves one life then its well worth posting. Thanks to those that took the time to watch it. I just hope that the one person that took the time to watch it is the one that has the front offside blowout when he is approaching me or mine travelling in the opposite direction. At least he will be the one that has some idea of what to do, instead of the natural reaction of putting his foot on the stop pedal.

 

[Bellini]

I found that very useful and lamely admit to not knowing it. But it does make perfect sense.

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[DBK]

Many years ago I was driving west on the M4 towards Swindon when suddenly just ahead there was what appeared to be small explosion of dust and a car shot left and buried itself in the bank.

I stopped to find the driver completely unhurt, which given this happened at about 70mph was remarkable.

It turned out his front right tyre blew out catastrophically. I suspect now his reaction to this was to stamp on the brakes - and flew into the shrubbery as result.

 

[timdownieuk]

Just catching up with this. Interesting, BUT, ultimately you need to come to a stop so just what is accelerating achieving?

Clearly braking is a bad idea but I'm not sure how accelerating helps when, at the end of the day you need to stop.

I guess it might give you a moment or two to sort out the steering correction that you need to do but given that you will have to come off the throttle, surely ultimately control is through steering correction, not acceleration.

 

[tonyidle]

Accelerating counters the dramatic drag of the failed tyre & helps stabilise the vehicle. The are actually no suspension / steering / wheel & tyre failures where braking is a good idea. No matter what has happened to any of these components given half a chance the vehicle will stabilise and remain controllable. Minimum driver input will allow it to do so.

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[timdownieuk]

Accelerating counters the dramatic drag of the failed tyre & helps stabilise the vehicle. The are actually no suspension / steering / wheel & tyre failures where braking is a good idea. No matter what has happened to any of these components given half a chance the vehicle will stabilise and remain controllable. Minimum driver input will allow it to do so.

Minimum driver input doesn't satisfy those out to prove that "speed limiters are dangerous", which is the tag line beneath the video. At some point you have to slow down so I would just gently ease off the throttle (it being the minimum possible action that will get me to stationary without further destabilising things).

All in all, I think that video is desperately unscientific and potentially dangerously misleading.

 

[PP Bear]

I've just posted a thread ref blowouts at the link below, not sure if it's helpful at all.

http://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/motorhome-tyre-blowout.89524/