This is comical in a sense, all of us are trying to convince a fellow forum member to do the right thing and properly secure the pipe (that's a good thing), but somethig that scares me a whole lot more is how car and truck manufacturers are allowed to attach spare tires!! Nobody seems to say anything about the millions of potential
disasters waiting all of us every day.
How many compact (or full size) spares have you seen in or on the side of the roadway? Here in the rust belt, I see them regularly. The spare on many pick-up trucks, most vans, and SUV's are held under the vehicle with an 1/8" cable, the size that is used on your garage door!! The cable is strong enough for this duty, however, the cable rusts right at the attachment point of the steel cross bracket that holds the spare.
The tiny cables construction is probably 7X7 galvanized AC cable. Meaning there are 7 main strands consisting of 7 smaller strands twisted together. These 49 tiny little wires that make up the cable can rot through quickly allowing the attachment to fail.
I witnessed a mini van that lost its compact spare 2 cars in front of me a couple of winters ago. The spare dropped on the road (city street) and the car behind it hit it with it's right front wheel. Luckily the road surface was snow/ice covered which allowed the spare to slide on the road when hit by the slow moving vehicle instead of climbing over it as it would at high speed on dry pavement.
This incident ended well, but think about hitting a spare in the road at 75 mph, I see roll over!! it's something we should all be aware of.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.....No! it's just another spare tire!!
Larry C