Wheels don’t go flying off cars too often (though it’s happened to me once in a Lemons race) but when they do, they have a remarkable ability to cover some serious, bouncy ground. This video, shot by the doorbell camera on a home in Pataskala, Ohio, shows just how much momentum and speed an errant wheel can maintain after it separates from whatever was spinning it in the first place. Ding-Dong, motherlovers!
Here, watch the destruction:
Holy crap, right? That wheel just smacks that column out of the way like it was smacking away a fly, and then it sounds like it shatters glass on the door before helpfully ringing the doorbell.
It’s not really clear what the wheel came from; it could be a trailer tire, though it seems large enough to have come from a car, too. The hub is smoking pretty dramatically, so perhaps the bearings seized or something like that, which caused a enough friction to weaken the metal, snapping off the wheel and sending it on its new mission to trash someone’s front door.
I especially like this look of absolute bafflement as this kid hears the doorbell and commotion, and comes out to see a smoldering tire on the lawn and a trashed front porch; you can almost feel the what-the-fuck rays emanating right from your monitor.
So, um, be careful out there, I guess? Do what you can to keep random wheels from slamming into your houses, somehow.
DISCUSSION
Damn tires, interrupting my dinner, asking if I’ve heard the Goodyear news.