Driving drunk? Check. Driving on bare rims? Check. Setting your car on fire? Check, baby. This Australian driver truly had the bad decision trifecta. The man has been charged with drunk driving after driving his SUV home on bare rims with the vehicle on fire. The kicker? He told 7NEWS he can’t remember any of it. The 39-year-old father allegedly returned a reading of 0.215, more than four times Victoria’s legal limit of 0.05. Luckily, no one was hurt.
He had been drinking after work on Wednesday night when he traveled by to Deer Park, several suburbs away in Melbourne. Video captured the vehicle moving on three tires with sparks showering the road and the car alight. It was found still burning outside his home.
His recollection of the night stops pretty early. He told 7NEWS he remembers a third drink and nothing after it, and that he suspects he had more than that. He doesn’t recall being taken to Sunshine Police Station for questioning. He said he’d believed his car was towed home.
The man said hes ashamed of himself and glad he did not injure anyone. He described watching similar stories on the news and thinking poorly of the drivers involved, and said seeing himself in that position is embarrassing. He said he expects to lose his license and called the episode a wake-up call.
Why Driving on Bare Rims Can Set Your Car on Fire
Plainly put, if you drive on bare rims, it’s quite possible you’re going to set your car aflame. A steel or alloy rim dragging on asphalt at speed generates some serious friction and heat. Heat and sparks can ignite fuel vapor, brake fluid, and other flammable materials in your car. In fact, Dylan Thomsen of New Zealand’s Automobile Association told the New Zealand Herald in 2024, after a driver was filmed on a rim, throwing flames along a highway, that driving with a flat tire is dangerous enough, and having no tire at all is “a whole other story.” This driver was doing both, and we saw the logical conclusion of what those behaviors got them.
In a case heard last year, a driver in Victoria whose tires had been spiked by police continued on three rims across the state’s border region, starting fires along the roadside before his own car caught fire, according to The Border Mail. And the car is only one part of the potential problem. Sparks from rims can also ignite dry grass along roadsides, which is a serious concern across much of Australia. To sum it up, everything this driver did was a bad choice for him, the highway, and other drivers. Don’t follow his example.