[Christ]

Hm. Oddly, I still don't see a problem with driver's lifting an aluminum door to look at/play with a set of lugnuts... apparently, neither does my uncle. He's been doing it for nearly 30 years now, and when he owned his own truck, back in the early 90's, he had 1/4" aluminum plate skirts around his back wheels. Where do you think I got the idea in my head?

The idea that it would hold the tire in after the lugnuts came loose isn't really a stretch, since it hasn't got alot of momentum in a lateral direction other than continuing to spin on the axle it came disconnected from.

The studs that go into those wheels are like 1" longer than they need to be to properly seat the wheel. that means that if the fairing was 1" from the wheel (which is too far, honestly), the tire would still make contact with the fairing before passing the ends of the studs. Obviously, at this point, there would be wobbling and lots of noise/odd feelings, and the driver might have a chance to stop and pull off the road to inspect the problem before the tire actually flew off.

Honestly, given the pressure that the tire would be flopping around with, 1/4 aluminum probably wouldn't hold it in very well without being bent/dented, etc, so that needs more consideration to make it worthwhile.

The fairing itself isn't a big deal though, and could easily be made of clear material that wouldn't interfere with visual checks, and being that it only covers about 1/2 the height of the tire anyway, there should be no problem with lugnut checks.

Saying that you shouldn't make it harder for someone to perform a safety check is quite obvious. Noting afterward that there are many who probably don't do it the right way to begin with defeats the purpose of the first statement.

If lots and lots of drivers aren't doing it properly, why does it matter if you've made it more difficult for them to do what they're screwing up?

It's apparent that you don't want to make the driver have to work any harder than he already isn't, but on that same note, if the larger consensus isn't doing what they're supposed to do anyway, what are you really hurting?

So given the above, let's remove the idea of a strong enough skirt to withstand and contain a loose wheel.

Lets make the skirt clear, so that it doesn't interfere with visual safety checks.

Lets also make it only 1/2 the height of the tire, so that it doesn't interfere with driver's who probably aren't doing their duty anyway, on the off chance that they decide to do what they're supposed to do.

The result is still a net GAIN in efficiency due to less drag. I still don't see an issue.