Turkey Hunter
Well-known member
Good Afternoon,
You learn something knew everyday. When I learned how to drive, some of the things that I was taught was that when you needed to keep good tires on the car, check tread depth and for tire wear due to poor alignment. I was also taught that when you got a new car you needed to rotate your spare into your tire mix each time you rotated your tires so that it wouldn?t sit there in the trunk and dry out. (Yep, I?m that old - cars came with full size spare tires back then). This is still sound advice today for those types of vehicles that come with full size spare tires.
One thing that I just learned though was that even by doing all of those things, the tires that appear to be safe can still be a problem due to their age. Here?s a video link to an ABC News story with information that you should be aware of before you make your next road trip with your car. http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897 It talks about what can happened when driving with old tires and provides information on how to tell how old your tires actually are.
Tire failure can lead to roadway departure crashes (run-off-the-road, head-on or sideswipe crashes) due to loss of control as shown in the video.
I?m actually going out of town tomorrow and will be crawling under my cars tonight when I get home to check my tires age ? I replaced the tires on my car in February, 2008 from a national tire manufacturers tire store ? so I?m curious about what I will find.
Feel free to pass this information on to others as you deem appropriate.
Joe
Joe Glinski
Safety Programs Engineer
Federal Highway Administration
200 N. High St., Room 328
Columbus, OH 43215
You learn something knew everyday. When I learned how to drive, some of the things that I was taught was that when you needed to keep good tires on the car, check tread depth and for tire wear due to poor alignment. I was also taught that when you got a new car you needed to rotate your spare into your tire mix each time you rotated your tires so that it wouldn?t sit there in the trunk and dry out. (Yep, I?m that old - cars came with full size spare tires back then). This is still sound advice today for those types of vehicles that come with full size spare tires.
One thing that I just learned though was that even by doing all of those things, the tires that appear to be safe can still be a problem due to their age. Here?s a video link to an ABC News story with information that you should be aware of before you make your next road trip with your car. http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897 It talks about what can happened when driving with old tires and provides information on how to tell how old your tires actually are.
Tire failure can lead to roadway departure crashes (run-off-the-road, head-on or sideswipe crashes) due to loss of control as shown in the video.
I?m actually going out of town tomorrow and will be crawling under my cars tonight when I get home to check my tires age ? I replaced the tires on my car in February, 2008 from a national tire manufacturers tire store ? so I?m curious about what I will find.
Feel free to pass this information on to others as you deem appropriate.
Joe
Joe Glinski
Safety Programs Engineer
Federal Highway Administration
200 N. High St., Room 328
Columbus, OH 43215