I wouldn't be surprised if the highway patrol encourages them not to, at least if the gator ends up in a traffic lane. "Hey, this walking out onto the freeway isn't so dangerous" has probably been the last thought of a number of people who had makeup covering the treadmarks at their ceremony.
I'd also bet that the truck is at best several hundreds of yards past the scene by the time the driver notices a tread separation back on the trailer wheels (if he does notice immediately -- as you said, he's got 17 more where that came from, and also he might be pretty busy in a well insulated cab next to a noisy engine when it happens), spots a safe place to pull over and a hole in traffic through which to get to it, and brings his 40 tons of fun to an orderly halt. Although some truckers are pretty good at it, emergency stops and sudden unplanned lane changes from high speed are *not* betting the main chance when it comes to safety -- of yourself or those around you.
Of course, losing a gator and losing a whole wheel and tire are two very different propositions. The latter would definitely expose the character flaws that make people cut and run, hoping that it didn't hit anybody and praying it couldn't be traced if it did. Most, I genuinely think, would pull over, buttess the situation in a cold sweat, and retrieve the wheel, inform the authorities about the safety hazard, or render aid and face the music, whichever applied.
Maybe with an occasional pause to puke.
If only this happened to bikersTeen Forced to Remove Car Sound Equipment ALEXANDRIA, La. - A judge has ordered a teenager who blasted his pickup truck stereo to remove all non-factory installed sound equipment for violating...
After all, that thing is big and tough and full of kinetic energy... and prone to *bounce* a few times before it finally gets trapped on or in something or deflated. It can severely damage more than one car, and go over the center divide or the guardrail like nothing, before finally coming to rest somewhere. (The last time I read about this in the paper, the context was that somebody got squashed like a bug in the oncoming lanes of the freeway.) And you wouldn't want to hit it even after it had come to rest, in anything close to an ordinary pbuttenger car. A wheel parting company with the vehicle has got to be one of the scariest things a trucker could see in his mirrors.
--Joe
