In my lifetime I've seen tyres evolve from the wooden wheel.... The cross-ply fabric to the radial fabric and then to the radial steel ply. At the time the tyres also evolved from tubed to tubeless, and then the all singing tubeless steel radial we all drive on today.
The evolution to the steel radial wasn't pain free. Some defects evolved namely tin worm "rust". What wasn't accounted for was the fact the tread can get cut by road debris exposing the wire construction. This exposure can allow rust to degrade the radial construction and this happens.....
My first job after leaving school was working for a company called All Tyre Services which was a national network owned by Firestone.
Firestone developed a steel radial tyre called the S1 ( steel one ) and meany of them would distort in this fashion. Moving on in time they developed a tyre called the S211. This was even worse because in the early days exposed wire and rust was one element, but they missed the fact that wire is subject to flex fractures. Road imperfections would flex the internal structure allowing it to break. Given time it would do the same as the picture above.
Sadly a car driving on the S211 crashed on the motorway due to a blowout on a defective S211 killing four occupants. The following lawsuits laid blame on Firestone who then closed all it's UK tyre fitting workshops and they pulled out of the UK entirely.
The evolution of the radial, steel radial and the tubeless steel radial was a learning curve but thankfully the condition above i haven't seen for many years, so we have learnt how to make tyres safer.
Point to note Michelin made a new steel tyre called the ZX and the XZX and they were as bad as the Firestone S1 and S211..... The image above is the XZX.
