On father's day yesterday, the wife, kid and I were headed out on the 101 to go to brunch on Sunset. At somewhere around Reseda I think, we drove up to a 63 Corvette split window. This has been one of my dream cars since I had my 68 Camaro RS/SS. We are in the #3 lane and I asked my wife to slow down so I can get a better look at it and just enjoy watching it on the freeway. We were doing about 55 at the time. The corvette was just chillin'.
He was in the #2 lane and was slowly moving into the lane right in front of us. As soon as he was in the lane my wife and I saw a puff of gray smoke. Just a quick puff. Then we started seeing pieces of the car start shedding away and directly into us. Now my wife was doing evasive maneuvers ans steered clear of the large piece of fiberglass that came towards us but we still wound up hitting small pieces. No damage to the LX.
Now as soon as that happened I could see that the back end of the vette started to fishtail just slightly to the right. So I watched as the driver slowly corrected into the skid. No problem. I figured he had it and that was that. Then I could see the rest of the tire peel away and then the vette made a HARD right hand turn directly into the median missing everyone else on the frwy. It was surreal to watch because the vette was fine and in control one second and the next second he is slamming head on into the concrete divider.
The frwy stopped and I was the first person there to make sure he was ok. I opened his door and I looked at him. He was dazed and bleeding from his mouth. Right after that I could hear a police siren coming up behind me so I decided to try and limit my involvement being as people who are much smarter than myself were there to take over.
But I sat and kept talking to the guy. First making sure he was cognicent [sp?]. He knew his name and where he was. Then he started getting really pissed off at himself and asking if I knew waht happened. I told him what I saw and kept telling him not to think about it right now because he needs to make sure he doesn't have any internal bleeding or broken legs. He hit the steering wheel pretty hard.
He looked at me and said, "broken legs? I'm in a wheelchair".
Oh fuck!
Then he start to tell me that he has been in a wheelchair and built the car so he could operate it just using his hands. Sure enough I could see the hand throttle and brake set up and right next to him, his wheelchair.
Fucked up.
Once the fire dept got there, about 5 mins later, then extracted him and got him onto a gurney. Thats when the firefighters noticed exactly what happened to the car. They said that they see the complete delamination of retreaded tires all the time. So when the tread completely comes off you are just left with the steel radials. Guess what? Its totally smooth and slick when you rub your shoe on it. ZERO grip.
So now we can see what happened. He was driving along minding his own business. One tire tread starts to peel away slapping at the rear quarter panel shooting pieces out at us. At this point the car is still controllable. But all that ends when the tire completely delaminates. It then gives 100% of the traction to the driver's side wheel shooting it a hard right into the barrier.
On the drive to brunch my wife looks at me and says, "don't ever buy retreaded tires". I said nope. Thats why we spend $900 everytime we have to get tires replaced.
Still hurts to see the vette, it really was beautiful.
