</font><font color="blue" class="small">( You may have stood on the ring but you didn't prevent it from doing anything. )</font>
I'm afraid you're right, although it was perhaps a tiny bit safer than not standing on it. I started working on those things before we ever heard of cages. There was a time when we left the tire and wheel laying on the floor with the ring down, aired it from the top (or back side), add a little air, pick it up, tap on the ring all the way around in hopes of being sure it was well seated, add a little more air, tap on the ring again, etc. Then sometimes we did about the same thing, but with the tire standing up with the ring facing a big post (away from where we were standing). Again, a tiny bit safer than standing in front of, or over, that ring, but only a tiny bit. And then we got smarter and started raising the lift in the grease bay, lay the tire down, and let the rack down on it; just barely touching. Overall, I think you could say I was just lucky; never had one come apart.
And even a cage isn't a guarantee of safety if it isn't securely bolted down to the floor. One of my brothers was airing up a big tubeless tire for a big diesel motorhome a few years ago, and had it in the new cage that Camping World had just gotten. The cage was standing against a wall, but had not yet been bolted down. No split ring or anything to come apart, but the tire was supposed to have 90 psi and it exploded at about 80 psi (later determined by the tire manufacturer to have been a defective tire), blew the cage away from the wall into my brother, knocking him unconscious and several feet back onto the concrete floor. He did regain consciousness before the ambulance got there, and only suffered a concussion.
