Roadside humor

I buy a new set of tires for my car about every two years.
I drive app. 25,000 miles a year and maintain rotation , alignment,
and balance on them throughout their usage. I assume I am probably
in the mid-to-high range on that type of yearly milage. I drive from tread
rich, to nearly tread bare, which in terms of where the rubber meets the road,
It's about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of wear absent from the tire after the two years.
Millions upon millions of people drive as I do, some more, some less,
they wear rubber off their tires just as I do. My question is, where is it? Where
does all that rubber disappear to? Is it simply absorbed into the surrounding
land? Is it stretched out over such a vast lengthy area that it's simply not visible?
I know that it disappears from our tires at an extremely slow rate, regardless,
It's disappearing from everyone's tires, everywhere, and on every highway and
byway around the world!
Think about it, billions of pounds of rubber, gone, invisible, except for the errors
seen on the concrete highway dividers and the places where someone either peeled out
or locked up their brakes. Do you think it could be harvested, along with the blueberries?
Just a thought.




LOL

If I'm not mistaken, it's burned off.

Into our water supply? Check tire pressure regularly. How many people do that?

Quote: 1BB

Into our water supply? Check tire pressure regularly. How many people do that?

I actually monitor my tire pressure closely because I tow a camper to vacation at music festivals.
Putting all that weight on my back tires, you better have every tire properly inflated.
Those small RV trailer tires, very important those are inflated properly.
I actually always travel with a electric tire pump that plugs into my car cig lighter or RV battery.

Quote: Thomas

Millions upon millions of people drive as I do, some more, some less,
they wear rubber off their tires just as I do. My question is, where is it? Where
does all that rubber disappear to? Is it simply absorbed into the surrounding
land? Is it stretched out over such a vast lengthy area that it's simply not visible?

I'd say "vaporized", but that's not technically true. I just don't know the proper term for "powderized".

It's not unlike your brake pads. Tiny pieces no more than dust wear and are tore away from the whole. In the case of brakes, you have the rims right there to catch some. Swipe a finger on them and they'll come away black. You can do the same in your wheel wells to see the tire dust, but much of what is there is also dirt, dust, road grime, etc.

Some indeed becomes part of the road, filling in the little cracks and crevices. Much of that is washed away when it rains. If you need a more visual example, just look at any asphalt racing. The groove, where the cars run, is always darker than the rest of the track. That darkness is the rubber being put down. Outside the groove you run into "marbles", the built up chunks of discarded rubber that's collected after being peeled from the tire carcass. That's just an accelerated and more extreme case of what your personal tires are doing.

Recycling is an impossibility. How would you collect it? A giant vacuum? A big, sticky lint pad? No matter which way, probably 95% of what you nick is gonna be dirt and stones and dust and rocks. But even if done in a laboratory, I'd imagine it would be rather pointless. The rubber in your tires isn't pure, from-the-tree rubber. It's an amalgamation of a hundred different chemical compositions, ones which aren't stable. Tires cure from the moment they're mixed until the moment they decompose in someone's field. The smell in a tire store are the fumes from this chemical curing. The rubber that has been heated, stressed, cast aside, and left to sit isn't the same as the rubber still on the carcass. Could you make it so? Perhaps. But it would require additional steps to make it viable, if it's even possible at all.

The blueberry mafia probably gets it and uses it to make their bribes when government cocaine isn't wanted.

Quote: Face

It's not unlike your brake pads. Tiny pieces no more than dust wear and are tore away from the whole. In the case of brakes, you have the rims right there to catch some. Swipe a finger on them and they'll come away black.

Pro tip: Don't do this when you've just come off the track.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Pro tip: Don't do this when you've just come off the track.

I boiled my brake fluid once. Nothing like coming into a turn at 105 mph, downhill, pushing the brake pedal, and having it go all the way to the floor without slowing your car down. Fun times.

I also caught a brake pad on fire once, but I'm 99% sure that was because I botched changing the pads (pro tip #2: don't get the grease on the front of the brake pad)

I do know that rubber built up on a runway is a flight hazard, not so much that it's there, but that it severely degrades braking when the runway is wet. So runways are closed periodically for them to physically scrape up the rubber build-up. Roads, they don't generally have tires hitting at 150+ mph with the weight of 25-150 tons or more behind them, so the build-up is much more gradual, and in most places, the rain takes care of the debris, though it simply gets washed into the drainage ditches or storm sewers. I suppose that means that most of that rubber ends up in our waterways, or gets extracted at waste treatment plants and the solids go into landfills. I don't know if in desert climates, like Las Vegas, where the rain is not sufficient to clean the rubber build-up, they scrape there like they do runways. Anybody seen this on western roads?

Quote: beachbumbabs

I don't know if in desert climates, like Las Vegas, where the rain is not sufficient to clean the rubber build-up, they scrape there like they do runways.

Though it doesn't rain much on an annual total inches or days per year basis, when it does, it really suddenly does it up right big time, with dramatic impressive seasonal thunderstorms that can be violent enough to carry pretty big stuff away into washes (phantom rivers that are usually bone dry until they suddenly aren't for a little while) leading some places to pass "stupid motorist" laws against trying to drive though the moving areas of sudden temporary water flow feeding these raging torrents and either getting yourself killed or needing to be rescued. One of these desert storms pushed over & carried away a tour bus for a while not too long ago. It intuitively seems like these might do a decent scrub & scour job when they happen. Like what I've seen of Manila public sanitation & street cleaning procedures: wait for typhoon season, when it all suddenly washes far out into the South China Sea.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Anybody seen this on western roads?

Never, as far as I know. Would I know it if I saw it? I never heard of doing this until just now, and can't picture what the equipment for that might look like. Something like city street-sweepers with big brushes underneath on highways?

I always assumed that what appears to be an exceptional amount of street & roadway carnage (compared to other places I'm familiar with) that ensues whenever water comes out of the sky around this part of the country, was probably only about 65% due to drunken incompetence of local motorists' behavior when there is some kind of weather, and maybe at least 35% or more from a suddenly emulsified slick concoction of accumulated gunk that I assume builds up between monsoon thunderstorms. But I came to that scientific conclusion by pulling it out of my Fruit-O-The-Looms, by nothing but look & feel.

A little aside: If you happen to be in Las Vegas during one of the July-September seasonal thunderstorms, there's an interesting informal tourist attraction center-Strip. It is commonly called "The IP River" even though the place where it happens is no longer called the IP. The water coming down on the west side of the Strip has to go to the east before finding the way to Lake Mead and the Colorado River, and it does so via an ancient (meaning older than blackjack) wash that goes right through the bottom of the IP/Quad site near the Harrah's (north) side of that property.

It can turn into a pretty impressive show of suddenly deep fierce whitewater rapids that I've seen carrying suitcases and mattresses and carts and big furniture and all manner of stuff from who knows where roaring through, with a crowd of stunned tourists standing there staring open mouthed at what probably looks like the Mayan Apocalypse if they're seeing it for the first time. People who parked in the garage there sometimes can't leave for hours or half a day or more, and they have to station people and barriers so they don't die trying. Prime viewing area in any thunderstorm is the big window looking towards the valet and the Strip on the first landing up the escalator that you'd take to go to the monorail station at the back of the property. But cocktail service doesn't go back there, so get your refreshment on the casino floor before taking your spot.

Not as good as the dancing fountains, but probably better than the volcano, in my opinion.

Quote: DrawingDead

A little aside: If you happen to be in Las Vegas during one of the July-September seasonal thunderstorms, there's an interesting informal tourist attraction center-Strip. It is commonly called "The IP River" even though the place where it happens is no longer called the IP. The water coming down on the west side of the Strip has to go to the east before finding the way to Lake Mead and the Colorado River, and it does so via an ancient (meaning older than blackjack) wash that goes right through the bottom of the IP/Quad site near the Harrah's (north) side of that property.

It can turn into a pretty impressive show of suddenly deep fierce whitewater rapids that I've seen carrying suitcases and mattresses and carts and big furniture and all manner of stuff from who knows where roaring through, with a crowd of stunned tourists standing there staring open mouthed at what probably looks like the Mayan Apocalypse if they're seeing it for the first time. People who parked in the garage there sometimes can't leave for hours or half a day or more, and they have to station people and barriers so they don't die trying. Prime viewing area in any thunderstorm is the big window looking towards the valet and the Strip on the first landing up the escalator that you'd take to go to the monorail station at the back of the property. But cocktail service doesn't go back there, so get your refreshment on the casino floor before taking your spot.

Not as good as the dancing fountains, but probably better than the volcano, in my opinion.

OK! Something else for my bucket list now!