Why you should NOT continue driving a car with a punctured tire [Video]

The invention of the wheel is considered to be among the most important milestones in the development of human beings. One of the major application of wheels ever since their invention by ancient humans was for mobility and transportation. Later, a wheeled cart was attached to a horse which resulted in a horse-drawn carriage. Jumping to 1900s, wheels were being used along with a rubber tube/tire on the early cars. Since then, the thin tire tube has come a long way and modern-day cars come with wheels that are shod on with advanced rubber tires.

One of the major limitation car tires have is that that they require to be filled with air in order to function well and then causes serious implication if there is a puncture in the tire. Now several people drive their cars knowing that the air pressure is below the required limit or drive even when the tire is punctured. The video below by MR. INDIAN HACKER illustrates why one should never drive a car whose tires are punctured or have low air pressure in them.

In the video, a Maruti Suzuki Esteem is used to illustrate the damage done to a car’s wheels if driven on a punctured wheel. In the initial part of the video, we see that the front left tire of the Esteem (tubeless in this case) is completely deflated for the experiment. The car is then driven around the roads while those inside the car describe the experiences they are having driving and riding in a punctured car. As expected, the ride quality becomes quite harsh and the cabin gets filled with weird noises coming from the punctured wheel. The steering feedback is also quite rough with the steering leaning towards the punctured tire.

Now even if your car’s tire is not punctured but is running well below the recommended air pressure limit, you are in danger of bursting the tire completely. This is because when the tire is running at a lower air pressure, the sidewalls of the tire are unnecessarily strained which causes them to weaken. also, the ride quality and steering feedback changes if the tire’s air pressure is low and due to the excessive pressure on the sidewalls, the tire can burst. Even if the tire does not burst, doing so affects its life drastically.

Towards the end of the video, we see that the Esteem is stopped to check the condition of the tire. As expected, it is in a tattered state and completely unusable now. While this will not happen usually, this experiment is just to show what can happen to a tire if the car is run with a flat tire.