+1
A simple reading of Amendment 1 of The US Constitution reveals that The US Congress cannot enact any laws “abridging the freedom of speech”.
However, a private entity–such as this website–can legally regulate what is posted by participants, as well as how those posts are expressed. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who don’t understand this reality.
I’m not ! ! !
The same four-letter word is found in this thread for the volunteer censors to attack.
A thought on mortality - General Discussion - Car Talk Community
For the price of a couple tires, just replace them and then you don’t have to worry.
Well, I was censored by a reader who didn’t like what I said only because it didn’t agree with his beliefs. It wasn’t obscene, profane or sexually explicit. He just felt his beliefs were of greater value than mine and flagged me. I would have been glad to discuss it with him but he thought no one should see what he didn’t like.
1 person alone can’t flag and “Censor” anyone. It takes either 3 or 4 people flagging something before a post becomes hidden (@cdaquila can you help me with that? I forget the number of flags it takes). Hidden posts can still be seen by anyone unless a moderator removes them, you just have to hit the button to unhide them. Frankly, swearing doesn’t bother me, I’ve worked on a factory floor and an ER, but the rules are the rules. I didn’t make them 
There you go again, @pyrolord314, being factual.
We will have none of that around here!
The tire was a Michelin LTS LT265/75 R16, with about 15,000 miles on it. It was mounted on the left rear of my 2001 Dodge Ram, 2500, 4x4, pickup truck. I was running it at 65-PSI, max tire pressure is 80-PSI.
My wife and I were on our way to Lowes to buy a pallet load of mulch to spread in our landscaping. While driving through the town, about 40 MPH, I noticed a thump coming from the rear of the truck. I stopped and I saw that the left rear tire had blistered and I immediately drove to a nearby tire dealer and had them change the tire with the spare. They threw the tire in the back of the truck and we went onto Lowes and bought the mulch.
On the way home, I was stopped at a stop light, second vehicle in the right lane with two vehicles in the adjacent lane waiting for the light to change.
Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion in the back of the truck and the truck windshield was covered with bits and pieces of mulch. Mulch also rained down onto the car in front of us and the two cars in the adjacent lane on my left.
When I had the tire changed, neither the mechanic nor I thought to let the air out of the tire in the back of the truck bed, and when I had the pallet put in the truck bed, I leaned the tire up against the pallet of mulch.
When the tire blew, the shredded steel belts and the sudden blast of air blew the ends off three of the bags of much and sent the mulch flying everywhere…
We all pulled over to the side of the road and luckily no one was injured and everyone thought it was ridiculously funny. I provided my insurance all with the promise that if the insurance did not cover cleaning their cars, I would. My State Farm Insurance Agent told me that only one of the folks made a claim for cleaning their car and the insurance paid for it under “road hazard.”
As you can see in the attached photo of the tire, when it tire blew, it blew catastrophically, and if I had been driving at speed, it could have resulted in a very serious accident.
So a word to the wise, “Do not ride on a defective tire!” You are putting your life, the lives of your family and friends, and the lives of anyone near your vehicle in danger.
This is a follow-up to the posting I made earlier concerning a Michelin tire on my Dodge Ram Pickup truck developing a bubble and its subsequent destruction…
This will explain why I so quickly stopped my truck and checked out the thumping coming from the rear end…
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was serving in the U.S. Air Force and stationed at AFSouth NATO Base in Naples, Italy.
I had a Renault 12TL that was a lot of fun to drive hard. I needed to replace the tires on it and was told that a tire dealer was selling Firestone 500 Steel Belted Radial at a great price. I bought 4, had them installed and drove off happily. Within a week, after only a couple of hundred miles, I had a tire bubble out with a tread separation. The dealer replaced it and within two months, I had had another tread separation and a mysterious flat. I again took the tires back and the dealer replaced them.
I wrote home to my mechanic brother-in-law and described the problem. He was so concerned that he called overseas, to my headquarters, to get ahold of me. Back then, almost nobody had a phone in their home, and phone calls were not free…
He told me to get those tires off my car immediately as Firestone had recalled all of them for just this problem.
I did and bought new tires on base (not cheap…) and he mailed me a copy of the Recall Notice to notify the base.
I wrote an article for the base paper so other personnel would know about the cheap Firestone 500 Steel Belted Radials.
As it turned out; yeah, Firestone had recalled all the 500s in the US and Canada, but they had “dumped” them onto the European market, Nice huh???
Here is a link to the Firestone 500 Steel Belted Radial Recall Notice…
And here is a photo of the article that appeared in the New York Times at the time…
… and, those defective Firestone 500s were replaced with the almost-as-bad Firestone 721 tires. My aunt had a Chevy Malibu and–luckily–the 500 recall took place before her tires had tread separation, and she was initially happy with the replacement 721s, but she wound-up with tread separation on two of the 721 replacement tires.
It seems that, back in those days, Firestone made more bad tires than they made good ones.
Not sure how a tire recall from 1978 is going to help me.
Hi. Generally speaking one person can’t “censor” a post. I didn’t see or review the flag for @gandhi_s-flip-flop’s post, and it appears to have been deleted so I can’t see what happened.
Typically when I see profanity (basically above a damn) and it’s flagged, I’ll just edit the word out if the post is otherwise OK. If I find the language just by reading, I don’t flag it, and just remove the curse. John may have a different approach.
And just so everyone knows, the problem with the Firestone tires in 1978 was a chemical they (and everyone else) used to promote adhesion of rubber to steel - HMT (hexamethylenetetramine). In the presence of water, it turns into an acid - and it turns out that water vapor can diffuse through rubber. Firestone was the last to discover the problem and replace that chemical - and that’s why the successor to the Firestone 500, (the Firestone 721) also had the problem.
The way the company handled this became a textbook example of what not to do!
My posting was originally just a precautionary tale of not driving on a tire that “blistered.” I wanted folks to know that a tire can disintegrate when the blister busts as the tire did from my truck (and they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words…”). Since the tire had so few miles on it, the dealer replaced it free and we contacted Michelin in the event this was not a one-off event. Michelin said that they had not experienced any problems and the issue was probably caused by some road damage I caused by driving over something. We also notified National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) just in case we were being blown off by Michelin.
The follow-on posting about the Firestone Recall was just an elaboration of driving on defective tires as Firestone did not acknowledge the issue, hence the tire recall historical story.
I know my writings can become a bit convoluted, I blame it on the “stream of consciousness” my mind wanders off on and the fact that I love going off on a tangent…
Drive Safe…
It’s just a little pregnant.
