A friend of mine told me this story today:
About two weeks ago his brother, who lives in Victorville CA, was riding his Yamaha Road Star 1700 with his girlfriend on the pillion.
As he was riding on one of the freeways in the San Bernardino area he passed a group of six Harleys (going the same way). He waved, they waved and he rode on at a bit higher speed than the HDs.
He was doing around 85mph when his rear tire completely came apart. Not a blowout, a complete disintegration.
He said the only way he stayed up was because of his extensive dirt bike experience as the bike was swerving over all six lanes of the freeway.
He couldn't look behind him to see any cars, and just had to hope he didn't hit any, or get hit (this was around 1:00 PM on a Saturday, traffic was not light).
He finally got it over to the side, got off and looked around.
The Harley riders had fanned out and blocked all six lanes of traffic.
