After nearly hitting the remains of a truck tire on the highway the other evening, I thought that there must be a way to add a bit of safety to the equation. Locating a tire fragment at night, possibly in the rain, while driving 70 mph is somewhat difficult. Therefore, I suggest painting the inside of truck tires (and retreads) with a brightly colored paint and adding some reflective material. The premise of this is that there's a chance that some of either the paint or reflective material will show when the tire carcass departs from the truck.-- BMCCUE, Nov 14 2005 Why are the roads littered with exploded (?) trucks tires, anyway?-- DrCurry, Nov 14 2005 IDEA OF THE WEEK!
What a way to kick off a Monday.-- reensure, Nov 14 2005 I very nearly hit the remains of a car that had hit the remains of a truck tyre a couple of days ago. Pure genius idea - what the hell is it doing on the HB? [+]-- coprocephalous, Nov 14 2005 Very good +-- bristolz, Nov 14 2005 I've seen very few shed truck tires, but I've seen plenty of shed retreads. The roads are littered with these things because they don't bond to the tire structure as well as the original tread, and occasionally they come loose.
I have a feeling that if you painted the inside of a retread with reflective paint, that it would have even less adhesion to the tire structure than normal, and we'd see even more of these things on the road.
Great idea, so have a bun. Now you just need to hire some chemists to find a way to make the reflective paint as strong or stronger than the cement that's used to attach a retread.-- Freefall, Nov 14 2005 Perhaps an array of reflective beads or something so that there is more surface area for the vulcanization to take hold?-- bristolz, Nov 14 2005 I think that free loaded reflective chaff or chad would be an alternative to a reflective but integral tire component. Each strip could be printed with "Inspector #9" (:-); so, operators could be cross-referenced and pay the appropriate highway maintenance fees.-- reensure, Nov 14 2005 random, halfbakery