The Tyron was developed in England and sold primarily to the U.K. military. It eventually made it's away across to the U.S., somewhere around 2000. They started marketing it California with a shop in Burbank. I know all of this because they asked my unit, Bomb Squad, to help with their demonstrations. They would take a demo car and buy a new rim and tire for it. I would grind down the sidewall in a small spot to about half of it's thickness. I would then place a military blasting cap where I ground the tire and put several large patches over it to hold it in place. Using military time fuse, we could time the blasting cap to explode within pretty tight time tolerances, like 1-2 seconds.
During the demonstration, in front of news cameras, the owner would drive the car past the crowd and the front tire would blow. He would then drive the thing like a maniac all over a large parking lot for several minutes. The tire would never come off of the rim.
How it works.....When you look at a rim, it's got wide outer edges and a well in the center. If the well wasn't there, you couldn't slip the tire onto the rim. For those same reasons, when a tire blows, one bead can drop into that well and then easily come off of the rim. The Tyron is a band that covers that well. You install both beads of the tire onto the rim and then push down one side and install the Tyron band that covers the well. It's tightened on with a wrench.
With the band installed, the tire can still have a blowout or go flat, but the tire will never come off of the rim. In a blowout, there is always a chance that before you can bring the vehicle to a stop, the tire can roll off the rim and leave you riding on the rim. You often see this when a spike strip is used in police chases......the vehicle driving on rims only.
My Department did their own testing and drove cars to the point that all that was left was the two sidewalls, the tread was gone. The Tyron doesn't prevent flats, it just keeps the tire from coming off the rim if you can't get stopped right away.
