So the death count is up to 9 now in that van roll-over in Utah.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3065415

Now it seems clear that seat belts would have helped somewhat here, but the scary part is this could happen to anyone who is speeding and experiences a tire blow-out. Can any driver really be confident that they'll be able to control their vehicle if they experience a blow-out at highway speeds?

I guess the only things we can do is to always replace tires when they start to wear out and to drive at a reasonable speed.

 

I dont think thats very common though. Tires arent deisgned to toss a car even at high speeds.

My guess the tire blew and the driver might have freaked and jerked the wheel too hard and went flipping.

 

 

Well most of us don't drive passenger vans. I had a tire blow out the sidewall doing 80 once, it wasn't a big deal at all. The van was also speeding, over the 75mph limit. I've driven those things before...they are already unstable at normal speeds, flying down the highway like that is asking for trouble. I'm also guessing, like Jesal, there was some degree driver error involved.

A few years ago I remember one of the community colleges out here ditched all of their vans like these because they were too dangerous.

 

Those big bulky passenger vans are way too unstable to begin with. Add in the factor of 80MPH + and even the slightest gust of wind could cause you to lose control.

 

I was in an older Chevy full-size van going 80 when the back right tire blew. The van kinda swerved, but we got it to the side of the road OK. I wish I could've taken a picture of the tire. Huge hole in the sidewall and all the steel belts were just shredded everywhere! Never seen anything like it!

 

Those 15 passenger vans are very top heavy... people have been complaining about them, so if you get side way with one of those, it will roll.... Those people were USU student comming back from a field trip... The weird thing is that none of them was wearing their seat belt.

 

Biggest jury verdict I ever got was 10 years ago from a college van accident, except it wasn't a tire blow out, the driver was about to miss his exit and tried to swerve over from the inside lane and rolled the 12 passenger van 5 times. One of my clients had a 700,000 med bill... They estimated his speed at over 70 when he turned. Just for personal perspective I went to the scene one Sunday morning about 5AM and tried the turn in my E36 M3, the best I could do was about 53-55, it would have been safe at maybe 20 in that van. The CG was even worse because they had 9 peoples luggage strapped to the roof rack, I bet the CG was 5 feet off the ground or more. At least in the situation I dealt with no one died.

People just don't seem to respect larger vehicles when they aren't used to driving them, think of the stupid stuff you have probably seen 26' Uhaul trucks doing on the interstate...