At first this simply looks like another big rig lumbering up to a refuel stop. There’s no fire and no excessive speed that we can see. So why did one of these truck tires turn into a bomb? Because Russia, probably.
As far as Russian dash cam videos go, this is one of the most boring I’ve ever seen—until about a minute in. Then one of the tires on the “ServoService” trailer explodes, resonating hard enough to knock snow off several roofs and bump the camera we’re watching the action from.
There’s obviously something wrong with the wheel as the truck pulls into frame. You can see it’s on an unnatural angle before it turns to dust. Redditors on R/WTF are speculating that a faulty wheel bearing may have caused that, which then led to the air inside the tire getting too hot to be contained.
As you can see from this demonstration as a tire is heated from the outside, the air inside it continues to rise in temperature even as the external heat source is removed.
In the case of this Russian truck, the tire’s awkward mounting position probably caused the sidewall to reach a higher temperature than it was ever meant to, forcing the air inside the tire to take more heat than usual, which snowballed into the explosion we witnessed in the video.
So basically this incident, like so many others, could have been prevented by paying more careful attention to tires. Take care of your rubber and it will take care of you.
Hat tip to Paulo!