Another flat tire!

Not the first time I've gotten a flat...I wonder if this is a typical rate.

I was driving north on I-5, coming down off the Tejon pass, on the section of road that is all grooved. Going about 65 in the second lane from the left and started to feel some side-to-side wobble. It was intermittent, a little too high frequency for wind gusts, so I figured it was the grooved road. I'm guessing this is where something from the road came up and put a puncture in the sidewall.

After the grooved section ended, the handling returned to normal, but a mile or two later the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) went off. I had just added air to the tires in the morning and had forgotten to reset the TPMS, so I figured it was related to that and kept driving, intending to get off the next exit.

About a mile later (and a quarter mile to the off-ramp), the rear passenger-side tire just disintegrated. I've never gotten a flat while driving before, but the experience was oddly familiar...must've been from running over all those spike strips in Vice City.

Fortunately, it was a rear wheel, and aside from a high-frequency wobble from being unbalanced, I didn't suffer loss of controllability. I coasted in gear, and quite fortuitously was able to change lanes and get off the highway all very naturally, with a minimum of steering and no active braking.

I should've taken a picture of the tire, but I was a little too freaked out to think of that. The inside sidewall was completely separated from the tread and in general there was just a lot of damage from driving on it while it was flat.

I changed to the spare, drove 30 miles to Bakersfield, and got a new tire (a Hankook) at Discount Tire. Came out to $150, which is pricey, but they got it on real quick. They pointed out a small puncture (slit-like) and two very large punctures (like someone took a 1/2" hole punch to it) on the outside sidewall. The guys in the shop talked about Continental being a bad brand of tire, so I guess I will look into getting something else when it comes time to replace the rest.