Take a car wheel, wrap it in a tire, and fill that tire with air, and what you end up with can be surprisingly heavy. And yes, that even includes those “lightweight” alloy wheels. As such, a loose wheel rolling down the road can be a very dangerous thing. Luckily, no one was hit by the loose wheel that detached from this Chevy Malibu, as seen in the following brief video.
The video is less than 20 seconds long, and appears as though it was captured by the dash cam of another motorist. Looking at the video overlay, it also appears as though the incident in question occurred on July 5th, 2023, around 6:30 p.m.
In the video we see a wide, multi-lane boulevard with light traffic. The conditions are sunny with a few scattered clouds in the sky, while a large grassy divider splits the opposing lanes. As the video gets under way, we see a pair of Chevy sedans, including a Chevy Malibu and a Chevy Impala. The Chevy Impala in the left lane is blue, while the Chevy Malibu in the right lane is tan colored.
A few seconds in, we see the weight of the tan Chevy Malibu shift to the driver’s side of the vehicle. The driver starts to veer to the right, then hits the brakes. As soon as the driver hits the brakes, we see the Chevy Malibu’s front driver’s side wheel break loose and start to roll down the road.
The driver following behind slows down, exclaiming out loud at what they’re seeing. The wheel continues to bounce and roll, crossing the road straight towards oncoming traffic. It looks as though the wheel may collide with a crossover traveling down the adjacent lane, but according to the video description, the wheel didn’t actually hit anyone.
Check out the full video by clicking the link here.
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Comments
Probable owned by an ex-Toyota employee that worked on the Toyota bZ4X EV production line.
Hahaha.
Yeahhhhh a Toyota employee isn’t dumb enough to own a morbid Malibu.
“You don’t need to torque lugs nuts! That’s stupid nobody does that! We’ll just tighten them down good and…”
Daaaamn not the Bu-ghini
The remark says it all. “You don’t need to torque lugs nuts! There is a good reason for manufactures to have torque specifications on their products and proper tightening of all parts is essential to product longevity.
Torquing lug nuts is a good idea, because if nothing else it helps to prevent brake rotors from warping. There is a reason why the manufacturers have torque specs for things such as this. Hopefully that Malibu wasn’t damaged too badly.