Vehicle fires

[Jeremy-75qq8]

I am not a high mileage driver and even less so on motorways but in the last 18 months I have seen

- vehicle fire southbound m1
- vehicle fire m25 near Gatwick
- yesterday new ish looking merc on m26

I also past one in Richmond park about 3 years ago

I have either been lucky ( or unlucky depending on you point of view ) or there are a lot of cars catching fire !

I just wondered if there were any stats for this as the number I have personally seen in a short period is significant.

[Puddenchucker]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/governmen...

Edit to fix link.

Edited by Puddenchucker on Sunday 26th June 18:47

[Jeremy-75qq8]

Says not found but I will Google it later.

[Knock_knock]

Says here it's 300 vehicle fires a day, albeit from 2018.

65% are deliberate!

Even so, that's 100 a day catching fire "because".

https://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/vehicle-fires...

[Biggus thingus]

One near me in the last couple of weeks

Closed the motorway for at least 4 hours

[BossHogg]

They do, as the fires are so intense, they melt the road surface and it has to be resurfaced.

[ingenieur]

A friend of mine set fire to a brand new Vauxhall Omega just by driving it hard. I think... though I don't know, that the automatic gearbox got a hole in it and the fluid caught light.

I know it's a really stupid thing to do... but isn't it the sort of thing they'd pick up on during testing? All he did was drove it.

[Decky_Q]

I had an Austin Maestro Turbo go up in smoke on me on the way back from purchase!
I thought the windows were really building with condensation till I smelt the smoke, as soon as it stopped moving I could see the flames up through the panel gaps, so got out no phone of anything and basically sat beside it for 40mins till someone else went past and gave me a lift back to the traders.

[BossHogg]

I had a Peugeot 405 spontaneously combust on me on the A1M driving home from a course down south, I phoned for the fire brigade, by the time they arrived it was a shell, I managed to get my new car radio, the new 12 months tax disc and all my bags out of the car before it was engulfed!

[matchmaker]

Bus fire.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/s...

Looks like the usual clapped out bus used for school transport.
!

[andy118run]

While I don't travel half as much as I used to (probably 12k miles per year), I was thinking the other day that I'm seeing more of these.

Recently in the space of a couple of weeks I passed a Skoda Yeti ablaze on the A11 at Snetterton and a lorry fire on the A14 -
sad Youtube link of the lorry if vaguely interested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxju89-MOT8

and just browsing my local news I noted this (BMW Touring I believe?) from today -
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/traffic/vehicle-fire-...
Maybe one for the Police BMW engines thread on here...

[Draxindustries1]

matchmaker said:

Bus fire.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/s...

Looks like the usual clapped out bus used for school transport.
!

Kids with matches?

[Panamax]

Out in the States I saw a large and powerful pickup truck trying to join a freeway. The traffic was busy and he didn't really have a gap so hit the throttle to jump ahead of some heavy trucks in the inside lane. There was a loud roar as the pickup surged forward on the sliproad very quickly, presumably with hefty turbo assistance and a boy-racer exhaust.

The pickup was out of sight ahead of the heavy trucks but within seconds there was lots of smoke and I thought it must be tyre smoke resulting from some lunatic swerve. Not at all. The pickup continued to surge forward, the driver blissfully unaware of the smoke pouring out behind his vehicle.

About half a mile up the road he must have seen the smoke or felt his vehicle falter because he pulled over onto the shoulder. Within seconds flames were leaping out from the front wheel-wells and in less than half a minute the whole vehicle was an inferno.

I can only assume that some big turbo installation suddenly turned red hot as a result of the huge power demand and ignited oil in the engine bay. It was quite spectacular and a bad day for the driver/owner, marooned at the side of the road watching his pickup burn down.

[spaximus]

I was on the M1 last week following a young Asian guys in a small hatch back.

There were flames billowing underneath and smoke everywhere but it took a couple of us to force him to stop and get out of the car. Once again no hard shoulder so traffic would be held up behind us for miles as it burnt merrily away.

[eldar]

Many years ago i drove a Bedford CF. Collected from a service, loaded up, fuelled up a d set off.

2 miles later, it caught stalled. Tried to restart and it issued a cloud of fire. Service hadn't tightened the fuel filter up, so petrol was squirting onto the starter motor. Boom.

Left an 18" hole where the road used to be.

[OutInTheShed]

There seem to be a lot of shysters on the internet claiming that 100,000 vehicles catch fire every year.

The official number of vehicle fires seems to be more like 18,000 a year, of which a large proportion are 'started deliberately'.

I can't find the latest data but a few years ago the number of vehicle fires on Highways England's tarmac was something like 3-4000 in a year.

[Chromegrill]

Seems Birmingham is a "hotspot" at least for this cause of vehicle fire...


https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-new...

[Demhcs]

Certain cars do seem more susceptible to catching fire than others…

[yellowjack]

Delays getting off the M27 onto the M3 on Friday. No idea what was causing the issue initially, but soon there was a weedy column of smoke rising. It got steadily worse until eventually great big yellow flames were dancing skywards. No sign of the fire brigade at that point, even though the car had been alight for a good five or six minutes. That was a BMW - looked like a 3-Series of some kind. Young-ish group were stood a few hundred yards away filming it on their phones. Eventually some bloke in a pickup truck with amber lights stopped over both lanes (burning car was on the hard shoulder) which pushed folk wanting the M3 back onto the M27 around the fire. Which probably increased the likelihood of additional "rubbernecking" accidents. I was very glad that I got through before they closed the road for fire fighting and the resultant diesel spill... https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/dramatic-p...

[rambo19]

Years ago my dad had a van that caught fire, insurance would not pay out due to 'self ignition' !