1 person injured after loose truck wheel smashes into windshield on Hwy 401

By Lucas casaletto

One person is in hospital after the wheel of a pickup truck came loose and smashed into a vehicle going eastbound on Highway 401 just east of Oshawa.

Ontario Provincial Police said the truck was driving westbound at the time.

“That wheel bounced off the highway over the wall onto oncoming lanes on the eastbound side, striking another vehicle,” OPP Sergeant Kerry Schmidt says.

“The driver of that vehicle has been taken to hospital.”

Schmidt says the injuries are non-life-threatening.

Just an hour earlier, OPP tweeted about a similar problem also involving a truck that was travelling eastbound on Highway 401 at Neilson Road.

There was a third incident involving a wheel separation Thursday on the southbound portion of Highway 400 near Sheppard Avenue. 

Schmidt says no injuries were reported in either case.

“When you have a bouncing tire coming towards you at highway speed, drivers in the opposite direction have next to no time to react and the outcome can be deadly,” he says.

“… This is very troubling to see this outcome.”

Last Tuesday a woman said she was lucky to have survived after a wheel flew off another vehicle and crashed into her Ford Explorer, splitting the windshield.

It happened on the westbound 401 near Dixie Road in Mississauga on Tuesday afternoon.

The wheel fell off a car travelling east in the express lanes.

Schmidt said at the time that they see about 150 wheel separations a year in the GTA and they see a spike during the tire changeover seasons.

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