E5150.com

A tire and the rim comes off of a car while it is driving on the highway. I-71 South between Columbus and Cincinnati. 06-11-2007. About a mile before this, the hub cap popped off but the video didn’t show it well. It seems as though the lug nuts were removed.

ADDITIONAL INFO added Dec 11, 2009 – For all of those people think that this was due to poor maintenance: I would like to point out that I stopped to help the woman after the tire fell off and looked closely at the bolts. The threads were not stripped at all. It is my OPINION that the lug nuts were intentionally removed because the odds of all of the nuts falling off at the same time are astronomical. That said, if the wheel had been driven for any length of time (days or weeks) with loose nuts, the rim would have damaged the threads, NO SUCH DAMAGE WAS FOUND.

I had been driving behind her for several miles and while I did see the hubcap come off about 1 mile before the wheel, I did not see any lug nuts bouncing down the road and yes, I do believe that I would not have missed them even though they are small. Remember, real life has a bit more clarity than a grainy YouTube video.

She said that she had not had the car worked on recently, I suspect foul play but our conversation never went that far. She was not injured and used her cell phone to call a family member.