"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." -- Benjamin Franklin, /The Encouragement of Idleness/, 1766
Another question - does the fact that a wheel weight falls off mean that it somehow immediately enters the food/water chain?
My own experience is that wheel weights seldom (in my case never) fall off. How many have encountered a sudden imbalance of a wheel and discovered the wheel weights gone?
There are nearly 50 million passenger vehicles registered in California counting PNO's. He could just have read the study linked to in my post. Perhaps he even did.
(50,000,000 X 4 X 2)/16=25,000,000 pounds of wheel weights on the road at any one time.
500,000/25,000,000= .02 or 2 percent. Yeah, I'd say that one in 50 wheels here loses it's weights. Hell, two percent of the vehicles in California are probably STOLEN every year. LOL
-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:io6lj5tn3visf8umepkb1fbj28s1lpvlld@
4ax.com:
None that I've ever heard of in Texas but, in the Peoples' Republik of Kaliphornea (where the Highway Dept. INSTALLS potholes), anything may be possible...
The reason I take a critical view on the claim of 500,000 lbs a year is I used to ride bicycles alot. For income as a kid delivering papers and in cross state tours as a bicyclist. I'll stop to pick up a wheel weight since I'm a bullet caster. Much like a serious fly fisherman that ties his or hers own flies will stop to harvest road kill.
I've found more tools and cash than wheel weights.
Wes
-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller
I knew a guy who used to find all kinds of things. He walked and biked most of his life, and always happy to stop and pick up stuff. I remember the one time we were driving down the road about 35 MPH, and he hollered at me to stop. I did, he jumped out and ran back. Came back into the car with a pair of needle nose pliers that were in the road.
The one time I took my van to the repair shop, and then hoofed home. I found a bunch of wire nuts, which was better than nothing.
Try walking down the shoulder of a road with a metal detector. That's how a friend of mine used to gather his wheel weights for casting sinkers. Most of them are covered up after a heavy rain.
Found a 1/4" breaker bar a couple months ago. That was from my car.
Almost hit a pipe vise once with my truck. Must have fell off a welding truck step bumper. Picked it up, stuck it in my truck box and gave it to my brother in law who worked where I was working at the time. That is my best score. Well my brother in laws score ;)
WEs
-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller
Do you drive? How often do the wheel weights fall off your auto? To the best of my knowledge I have never had a wheel weight fall off. At least I never had the experience of a wheel suddenly start shaking and the guy at the balancing place say, "Gee Mister, your balancing weights have come off."
One in 50 wheels would mean that one car in about 12 loses a wheel weight annually. That seems pretty high to me. My estimate would be more like one car in thirty or less loses a wheel weight in the three or four years that a tire lasts. So my estimate is at least an order of magnitude lower.
No, there is a good quantity of weights that get flung on the road each year but probably not THAT much - remember, Greenies always estimate way high to drive home their "The Sky is Falling! It's FALLING!" message.
Though we'll never know for sure, there's no way to account for disparities between what gets sold as new weights and what gets recycled - there are too many wheel weights that get recycled by local bullet casters and keel-makers. Or that get into junkyards when the car gets ground up and sent to china as cullet, or...
But there's a huge difference between a weight falling off and bouncing to the side of the road, and "entering the food chain".
As a solid, an animal would have to eat AND RETAIN it for the lead to leach into their system. I'd think they would be the wrong shape and size for Gizzard Stones in anything but the largest birds.
I'm betting 90% of them get picked up by the sweepers, or stay in the immediate shoulder area where they are fairly benign.
Several times over my driving career. If you are paying attention, you'll hear the BANG! as the wheel weight pops loose and bounces off the fender liner (especially if it was an 'inner' weight) and then you'll notice a mild vibration at certain speeds.
Then you go by the tire shop and have them spin it on the balance machine just as it is - the suspiciously clean spot on the rim edge is the exact length and location of the replacement weight they hammer on, spin it again and the indicator zeroes out perfectly.
On something small like the 13" wheels on my Corvair or B210 you can barely tell, but the vibration is noticeable - and annoying.
When it's on the Work Truck with the huge LT245/75R16/E gunboats you lose a 2-ounce plus wheel weight and you KNOW it. It starts dancing the watusi at the resonant speed.
No way. Even if we could afford them, The Vampire Lobby will get them outlawed. With all the bullets outlawed then nobody can shoot their guns, and the world will be an even safer place...
EPA estimates that 1.6 mllion pounds of wheel weights are lost from wheels in the US annually. I think they're getting their data from several studies, including one report by the Ecology Center that summarizes several other studies:
On what factual and researched basis would you make your claim? Were you also an indigent paperboy, traipsing across the uninhabited areas of America, collecting refuse for sale? Caltrans reports eight ton miles of garbage per year on Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and CA-99 alone. That's 8X76X2000 = One Million Two Hundred Thousand Pounds of crap.
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