The prevalence of wheel end and tyre fires in the statistics tells us this is an issue which should concern any trucking operator, and it is important to look at technology as a way of stopping tyre fires in trucks.
In its most recent survey, National Transport Insurance’s (NTI) research arm, the National Transport Accident Research Centre (NTARC) released their 2020 Major Accident Report. The report finds that since 2011 over 33 per cent of Truck Fire Losses are caused by tyre or wheel end failure or faults.
In considering these findings LSM Technologies suggests it begs to question as to why proven mitigation technology such as TMSystems are not more widely utilised within the road transport industry?
“Wheel bearings, brake chambers, fuel lines, starter power cables; get any of these wrong and your ‘$200,000 prime mover’ might become ‘$3,000 of scrap metal’,” says the NTARC Report.
The report works thought the various causes of these fires. It identifies mechanical failure as having been consistently the primary causal factor in around 1 in every 20 large losses studied in the report.
One of these failures, steer tyre failure incidents contributed to 55 per cent of incidents and resulted in vehicles having high speed crashes with little tor no opportunity for the driver to respond before striking barriers or leaving the roadway. Also in the report, inadequate tyre inflation was identified anecdotally as a leading cause of tyre failure.
After investigating the causes of fires starting at the wheels, it was found that the predominant initial trigger was either wheel bearing or tyre failure, closely followed by wheel end fires initiated by the braking system.
Drilling deeper into the statistics in the NTARC report, analysing the 33 per cent of truck fires which were deemed to be as a result of a tyre or wheel end failure or fault, it was found that brakes were to blame 30 per cent of the time, tyres were also the cause for 30 percent of incidents. Bearings were to blame on 15 per cent of occasions and the rest fell under the classification of being of an unknown cause.
The LSM TyreGuard® TMSystems is well proven as a fit-for-purpose mitigation technology that provides the following advantages:
- All tyres are constantly monitored for tyre inflation pressures, both low and high pressures.
- On the steer tyre, the ‘Fast Leak Alert’ is a feature that provides the driver an immediate alert should the tyre lose more than 20kpa within 12 seconds, to signal immediately to the driver, a rapid release of air, a pending zipper failure or a blow out.
When monitoring the tyre temperature for the danger of fires the system will provide the driver with a high temperature ‘HOT’ alert, should the wheel temperature exceed 80 Degrees C.
All visual and audible alerts are provided to the driver via an in-cabin display/monitor.
