OCR Text |
Show Salt Flats Tests Show Tire Limitations The fact that an automobile is equipped with brand new tires of the highest quality is still no guarantee against tire trouble on a trip, the Utah Safety Council stated today. This observation was made following a series of salety-test runs may by Ab Jenkins, Jen-kins, the noted speed king, on the Bonneville Salt Flats on July 23. These tests were personally observed by the Safety Council's executive secretary, G. Ernest Bourne. "While all standard brand tires are of sufficient quality and strength to bear up safely for thousands of miles under normal highway travel, they just will not withstand sustained highspeed high-speed travel," Mr. Bourne declared. de-clared. "The tests made by Ab Jenkins conclusively demonstrated demonstrat-ed this fact and should serve as a potent warning to would-be speeders who fail to realize the hazardous risks they take when' driving in such a manner. We were all tremendously impressed to see these brand new tires break down after only 10 to 15 miles of travel at a sustained speed of 100 miles per hour. The treads would separate and commence com-mence to strip off like a banana peel. Unless the car was Immediately Immed-iately slowed down and stopped, these tire peelings would wrap themselves around the axel-rods and wheel assemblies in such a manner as to throw the car completely com-pletely out of control. It is easy to imagine what this would mean if it happened, as it often actually does, on the highway. "It is frequently this very thing that happens when we read of a traffic accident in which the investigating in-vestigating officer's account states that the victim's car went out of control apparently while going at a high rate of speed." The Safety Council spokesman emphasized that the Salt Flats tests were not made to point up modern tire construction deficiencies,, defi-ciencies,, but specifically to demonstrate dem-onstrate their limitations. The tires used were standard, original origin-al equipment tires with a standard stand-ard stock car of a well-known name. The original suggestion for such test was made by Governor Gov-ernor J. Bracken Lee several weeks ago. |