Word: fatale
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Remember when Congress abandoned the 55-m.p.h. speed limit a few years ago? That may have helped pave the way for this wave of fatal blowouts...
Back in the 1970s, when the 55-m.p.h. speed limit was established, U.S. tiremakers were introducing steel-belted radials--now standard on most American cars, including the Ford Explorers. Even in the '70s the fatal consequences of tread separation were well known. And so were a number of remedies, including the use of nylon caps that form a tourniquet around the belts and rubber to hold them together. Nylon caps are widespread in Europe and other parts of the world, but with U.S. speed limits set low, most experts believed they weren't necessary in America...
...company did not design a nylon cap into the tire. He is now a quadriplegic; the case is on appeal. According to plaintiffs' lawyers and experts, the STL studies document on video what happens to major-brand-name radials as their inflation is reduced: none of the tires suffer fatal tread separation if they have nylon caps. Last week Ford urged Firestone to recall its Wilderness AT tires in Venezuela because they lacked the caps...
...shark attack is rarely fatal, but it can be terrifying. Training for a triathlon on Gulf Shores Beach, Ala., Chuck Anderson watched in horror as a shark took off his fingertips, then kept coming back. "The fourth time, my right arm went into his mouth, and we went down to the bottom," he says. Anderson fought for his life, with the shark biting up and down on his arm until he heard the bone snap and break off in the shark's mouth. Anderson made it to shore and survived. He doesn't blame the shark for taking...
Like people who dread physicals, fearing that these "routine" examinations are going to turn up some fatal disease, my wife and I were a bit apprehensive about putting our house through an environmental physical. I once interviewed a Texas woman who paid $350,000 for her dream home, only to find out after she moved in and got sick that the place was infested with a highly toxic mold and required a $650,000 cleanup, with men in moon suits cutting out every piece of mold-infested timber, wallboard and carpeting and carting it off for burial as toxic waste...