List;
Speaking of tires.
When I was at SEMA a few weeks ago I saw some new innovations that caught my
eye, one in particular came from China.
It's called "TBSS" that stands for Tire Blowout Safety System.
What it does is prevents the car from taking off in one direction or another
when the system detects a tire blowout. Unfortunately they probably won't
work on our Tigers,
It works on the power steering system either rack-and-pinion or the
recirculating ball types. When a blowout happens a sensor in the wheel
triggers the system whereby
the steering locks up (I know that sounds scary, stay with me) so that no
outside forces can turn the wheels, you however, still have complete
control of your steering
and are able to pull off the road in complete control.
Fantastic idea.
They have 13 patents world wide so far. It was hard to ask a lot of
questions because the engineer didn't speak any English, he had a young lady
that could speak
some English so was able to ask only basic questions. They had a
demonstration set up to show the idea; it was a front end of a car (two
wheels and rack-and-pinion
and steering wheel). Normally you can grab the tire and turn it and the
steering wheel will turn (ever bump into a curb and the steering wheel wants
to turn) when she
triggered the system simulating a blowout you could not turn the tire, but
the steering wheel would allow you to turn all you wanted to. Slick!
She gave me a DVD demo that shows some of the testing and info they have
done.
I have no doubt that this will start showing up on some of the high-end cars
soon.
They have a website www.himile.com <http://www.himile.com/> it takes some
searching around (and in English), but there is some info about it. Just
keep looking for "TBSS".
Jerry Christopherson
9473187
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