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An off-duty police officer in New Jersey is counting his blessings after a runaway tire came flying at his Jeep while driving down the highway. A raw video clip recently uploaded to Facebook has since gone viral, showing what appears to be a heavy-duty tire rolling down a stretch of interstate before hopping on the median and catapulting itself into oncoming traffic.
According to local news affiliates, this reportedly happened on Route 440 in the vicinity of Edison, New Jersey, which is in the central part of the Garden State. The runaway tire shown on the footage seems to have come off some sort of semi-truck or heavy-duty vehicle.
As it’s rolling down the middle lane of the highway, like any tire would if allowed to roam free, it eventually follows Newton’s laws of physics and changes direction. Inertia causes the tire to jump the center median and, unfortunately, crash into the Jeep Wrangler.
It may seem like an innocent tire, but your average semi-truck tire weighs over 100 pounds, so it’s anything but. When colliding with an opposing force, such as another vehicle, it can result in a deadly situation.
The driver of the Jeep, officer John Rice, was driving behind his wife’s car, who was also transporting their three children when the incident happened. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt, but the same can’t be said for the Jeep Wrangler.
“Initially I thought please don’t hit my wife…please don’t hit her,” Rice told reporters for New Jersey’s ABC affiliate. “My wife’s in the car in front of me, three kids in the car and that was going through my head, please don’t hit her.”
The New Jersey State Police is still currently investigating the provenance of the runaway, and almost deadly tire.
