New Safety Standards for Tires! (P1)

We bet you didn’t know that there are new tire safety standards coming down the bureautocratic pipeline. You might be thinking: Who cares? Or, is this needed? Or, how much is this going to cost me?

There’s actually a bit of story behind the answers to those questions. Tires are a factor in a lot of accidents. One of the core reasons for tire condition being so dangerous is that tire ignorance. That’s right we said it, most of us don’t care enough to dig into this topic and that lack of knowledge is killing people.

So, The Kicker Blog, has waded through a mountain of pretty boring information in order to bring you a series of information worth knowing. We’ll try to keep this light hearted and stick to the most vital facts so more of our readers will be tempted to read on.

Series Introduction: Tires

In order to cover this topic effectively we’ll brake it into pieces. This first post will cover the basics of the new regulations, where they came from and what the impact will likely be. The next post will cover some of the myths and misunderstandings we drivers have around tires. It should be rather surprising.

The Background

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administratino (NHTSA) issues Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) and regulations for new vehicles (and equipment) to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes.

In October of 2017, an executive order was issued, requiring any federal agency attempting to institute a new regulation to identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed. Long story short, administrators and industry representatives decided that tire regulation hadn’t been updated in a long time and technology advancements likely obsoleted many tire regulations. In other words, tires were an easy place to run up the scoreboard in efforts to offset new regulations.

Not to get too nerdy…

The last update to tire standards came in year 2,000 as a result of number of tire separations. Most tires at the time were bias-ply tires which were suffering heat build up at highspeeds. Administraters sought improved testing standards, which didn’t happen, but they did manage to enact the TREAD act. (We wish we were kidding, that’s what it’s called.)

Anyway, now most tires are Radial-ply construction, which along with better material science has eliminated the heat issue.

However, the popularity of low profile tires has potentially created a problem. Regulations required a Bead Unseating Test, which checked to see how much side pressure it took to cause a tire to break it’s seal with the rim. In many low profile tires, the rim blocked testing equipment.

A third issue under consideration is “chunking.” Chunking seems to be damage to tread under extended use which could expose the structural bands inside the tire. However, manufacturers claim they don’t have a good definition for the term and the test isn’t adiquate to predict catastrophic a tire failure. In short, they don’t know how to diagnose what the regulation is refering to so they’re held to an ambiguous standard.

This could be an opportunity for the regulation to be thrown out entirely, but who knows for certain.

There are a few more items up for review, but you can already see the common theme. If you have an opinion you wish to express, you are invited to do so. Instructions for comment can be found at this website.

Conclusion

Improved regulation is coming. Revising Tire Safety Standards has generally improved safety, fuel economy and tire longevity, but this next round should also target reducing unneeded regulation to reduce the burdon on manufacturers. The goal is to have that cost savings pass on to consumers.

Will this goal be achieved? Only time will tell.

Sources include the US Department of Transportation NHTSA, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards,