Wheel safety reforms
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by Ian Wylie • The British Standards Institute is updating its wheel safety standard following a dramatic rise in the number of deaths caused by truck wheel loss.
Over the next six months BSAU50 will be amended to ensure that wheel nuts are greased and torqued to the right settings.
In the latest incident a motorist was killed when one of two lost wheels bounced over the central reservation of the M6 near Walsall and smashed into his Rover car.
Police say the wheels worked themselves loose from a Volvo rigid owned by Wolverhampton-based Beeches Transport. Driver Geoffrey Pagett escaped unhurt. He was interviewed by police but no charges were brought.
Last month a motorist was struck by a car while trying to retrieve a truck tyre from the M40 (CM1-7 June). And in April a haulier and a driver were convicted of causing death by reckless driving after a pregnant woman was hit by a stray wheel on the M54 (CM6-13 April).
John Lee of the National Tyre Distributors Association says the UK has a poorer safety record than the rest of Europe: "Wheels aren't being fitted as cleanly as they ought to be," he says. "In most cases these incidents are caused by human error rather than component failure." The NTDA says wheel nuts should be retorqued within 50 miles or half an hour of a wheel being fitted.