On the way home from work today I briefly followed a flatbed tow truck. It had one car up on the bed, and was dragging another behind it as they often do. Normally I wouldn’t have cared at all. This one had an interesting feature going on though. The towed car, a late 90’s Bonneville, had a flat tire. And that flat was one of those that the car was still rolling on.

Now, as a former fan of NASCAR, I can tell you that at high speeds a flat tire will eventually shred and usually tears up the bodywork. Like, a lot. Well this guy was getting towards 40mph or so, and that tire was flopping about in a big way. He seemed quite oblivious.

This was in the lane to the right of me, and was a bit ahead. I was desperate for the guy ahead of me to move so I could get out of the way of the impending disaster. And before I could do so, a chunk of plastic about the size of my head did get ripped from the car. It was on the side opposite me thankfully, so the plastic just went off towards the shoulder. But damn.

When I finally did manage to pass the thing the driver was still busy being quite unaware of a problem behind him, though I can’t imagine he didn’t feel the wobbling. Freak.

Anyway. I didn’t get the name of the company on the cab, but it was a dark-ish red with brown/gold lettering. So, yeah. Watch out.